Date: Fri, 13 Mar 1998 20:05:17 -0800 From: Greg Shenaut <greg@bogslab.ucdavis.edu> To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: [Fwd: Is this illegal?] Message-ID: <199803140405.UAA04041@myrtle1.bogs.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 14 Mar 1998 10:48:31 %2B1030." <19980314104831.06328@freebie.lemis.com>
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In message <19980314104831.06328@freebie.lemis.com>, Greg Lehey cleopede: >On Fri, 13 March 1998 at 19:09:52 +0000, gilley wrote: >> >> I noticed the following output from my ISP. >> Can they run academic versions for profit? > >That depends on the licensing. > >> Also I have seen that they run "Unregested BSD" >> for there servers. It does not say FreeBSD. Can >> They do that? I know linux is completely free >> but the only version of BSD they could use would >> be FreeBSD or NetBSD, yes? > >I don't see why your ISP shouldn't be running FreeBSD. A large number >do. But neither FreeBSD nor NetBSD produce a message "unregistered >BSD". > >> Please let me know if they are doing >> something illegal here. > >You should try to find out what version of BSD they're running. >Possibly it's a demo version of BSD/OS, in which case there's a chance >that they are doing something in contravention of the license. If you >can get shell access to the machine, 'uname -a' will tell you. You >could also check with BSDI, I suppose. In BSD/OS version 3.X, there is a procedure you can run to "register" an ID code in the kernel. This makes this message shut up. A lot of owners of BSD/OS sort of resented the inclusion of this procedure, which was apparently done for marketing reasons, and so they don't do it, and you get the message as a result. It doesn't affect operation of the system at all. I own 2 BSD/OS systems, and have never run the procedure myself--in fact, the annoying message and what it says about the goals and priorities of BSDI were two of the forces which pushed me toward FreeBSD. (But I have to admit, BSD/OS is still a damn good O/S. But, as I become more familiar with it, so is FreeBSD.) -Greg To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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