Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Tue, 9 Jan 2001 12:53:15 +0100 (CET)
From:      Konrad Heuer <kheuer@gwdu60.gwdg.de>
To:        Dan Langille <dan@langille.org>
Cc:        <freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: any Linux distros which are not Open Source?
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.31.0101091244380.99395-100000@gwdu60.gwdg.de>
In-Reply-To: <200101091131.AAA24507@ducky.nz.freebsd.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help

On Wed, 10 Jan 2001, Dan Langille wrote:

> I'm involved in a thread on nz.comp and someone made this statement:
>
> "There are commercial forms of Linux that are not open source."
>
> That's a conflict of terms isn't it?  Doesn't the GPL require that it be
> open source?

The Linux kernel is under GPL and thus open source, I agree. On the other
hand Linux - in strict sense - is nothing more than the kernel. Thus one
can build a Linux distribution containing the kernel and a lot of
additional open source tools (like the GNU tools) which will be open
source completely. But I can imagine a Linux distribution where anything
except the kernel isn't open source. For example, as far as I know, you
won't be able the get source code of yast or yast2, the SuSE Linux
administration tool. And what's about Corel Linux? Will they put all their
special work to open source? I don' believe so. What I know is that Debian
Linux is the only one which is open source completely.

Regards

Konrad Heuer                                    Personal Bookmarks:
Gesellschaft f=FCr wissenschaftliche
   Datenverarbeitung mbH G=D6ttingen              http://www.freebsd.org
Am Fa=DFberg, D-37077 G=D6ttingen                   http://www.daemonnews.o=
rg
Deutschland (Germany)

kheuer@gwdu60.gwdg.de



To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?Pine.BSF.4.31.0101091244380.99395-100000>