On 12/16/2010 10:10 AM, Troy Dawson wrote:
> Hello,
> It's been a while since this came up and I'd forgotten that I'd written
> that part about creating commercial distributions from S.L.
>
> First off, the legal part.
> Under the license of the GPL, you can create a commercial distribution
> using SL.
> But my one statement remains.
> "When we make Scientific Linux we make sure everything in it is freely
> distributable. There might be things in it that would make selling it
> illegal. We just haven't checked."
> For SL6, at this point, we haven't added anything that isn't GPL'ed, so
> you should be ok there.

Sure, and I also am just using package sets based on what I have 
available from fedora, so I'm not too worried about that.

Still, the statement sounds like pure FUD.  I suggest replacing it with 
a more detailed statement.  Clearly if you have any specific concerns, 
they should be listed specifically, and if you have no specific 
concerns, the 'might' doesn't belong as any real answer to any real 
question, or serve any positive purpose.  Because unfortunatley we live 
in a world, and myself in a country, where I'm pretty sure that 90% of 
the people not _might_, but _are_ unknowningly and uncaringly and 
inconsequentially break some law during more than 50% of their days. 
Thus what law really boils down to is have you incurred the wrath of 
anyone with the means to litigate/prosecute you.

So when I see your 'might be illegal' statement as an answer to an FAQ, 
absent any specifics, especially next to the 'rude' part, then my 
interpretation is that it is a concerted FUD tactic, no more, no less.


>
> Second off, is it rude?
> I don't feel as strongly about that as I used to. Others might. I
> haven't asked.

But I hope you see my point.  I.e. I find it quite ironic that someone 
would be in a position of combining OSS from redhat, with their own 
software, and actively dissuading others from taking that new set of OSS 
software, and combining it with their own software, and commercializing 
it in a way consistent with the licenses involved.

In other words, how can you view it as 'rude' that someone 
commercializes a derivative of your _and redhats_ work, and then on the 
other hand _not_ consider it rude that redhat does _exactly that_ with 
the mountain of OSS that is their foundation (which is thusly your 
foundation)?

>
> Using SL6 to get things started until CentOS 6 gets released?
> I have no problem with that at all.

I'm glad, and would hope you also believe that nobody else would be in 
any position to legitimately have a problem with it either.  Nor to even 
to continue using SL, because I'd much rather be able to use SL and 
CentOS equivalently, and not be more or less dependent on either.


> I understand the reason. You need to get things started, setup and the
> bugs worked out.
> I would make sure that I switch all the packages from the one base
> distro to the other (SL to CentOS). If you have some packages from one,
> and some from the other, it might make your customers concerned or
> confused.

Yeah, this is all very early alpha stuff, and I wasn't going to be doing 
any mixing.

Again, I'm a typical OSS personality, and apologize for how 
argumentitive or passive aggressive I may come off sounding.  I do very 
much appreciate your work, it is definitely moving my project along, and 
it feels better using 6rolling instead of being dependent on a 30-day 
trial from redhat of non-free software.

Thanks,

-dmc



>
> Troy
>
> Douglas McClendon wrote:
>> Hello, my name is Douglas McClendon. I recently discovered the rolling
>> alpha of SL6 after discovering how comparatively closed the CentOS
>> development is. I have a history of working with fedora, and
>> contributing primarily to their livecd-tools and related anaconda
>> stuff. I even have my own alternate livecd generation system, which as
>> of the last couple of days now supports 6rolling. Thus I plan to
>> release a rebranded installable live .iso image in the next day or two.
>>
>> In general my first presumption is to deal with SL as an upstream
>> similarly to how I deal with fedora. I.e. brandstrip the same way SL
>> brandstrips from its upstream. The question I have next, is whether
>> you have the same attitude towards repo configs as fedora. Fedora has
>> explicitly stated that they do not mind rebranded and remixed
>> derivative distros shipping with repo configs pointing at their
>> repositories. However after reading your FAQs and seeing the bit about
>> you considering a commercial derivative to be 'rude' and 'possibly
>> illegal' (like FUD much?), I figure its best to ask if you have a
>> problem with that. If so, I can create my own quasi-mirror repo, but
>> I'd rather stick with yours as I do with my fedora derivatives.
>>
>> Also, I would like to comment on that 'rude' bit. Given that SL is
>> 'capitalizing' on the works of countless other individuals and
>> corporations who play by the GPL rules, I find the 'rude' comment to
>> be a bit 'rude' in itself. Myself, I've been unemployed for quite some
>> time, and have code and contributions that perhaps some subset of the
>> SL community are using to make their $$ jobs go more smoothly and
>> efficiently. It seems only fair that in the extremely unlikely event
>> that I could successfully commercialize a SL derived distro, that I
>> should be allowed to feed myself. I really wish I didn't mean that as
>> literally as I do.
>>
>> But no worries, it will certainly be no sweat to do my initial
>> development against the available 6rolling, and then switch to CentOS
>> for any commercial purposes - not because there is any legal
>> requirement I think that I do so, but just to avoid being considered
>> 'rude' by the SL community.
>>
>> In any event, I do very much appreciate your work, as well as the
>> mountain of work which is its foundation. Thank you, and I hope that
>> some of the experimental projects I'm working on will perhaps be of
>> some help to your community in the coming days as well. (in the
>> immediate future they will be non-commercial GPL offerings, but my
>> goal is to commercially feed myself with my work somehow)
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> -dmc
>> Douglas McClendon
>
>