Terrasoft appears to be taking order for YDL 4.0 now

Duke Robillard duke at io.com
Sat Nov 6 07:36:56 MST 2004


 >Perhaps someone's who's read the licences can clarify. Does your right
 >to modify and redistribute it only extend as far as the _source code_?
 >If so, then YDL is perfectly within their rights to restrict access to
 >the ISO and any binaries for as long as they want, provided they make
 >the source code for everything available.

Yeah, that's right.  Like, there are no free ISOs for the Redhat
Enterprise stuff, but there is free source code available (this
lead to WhiteBox Linux, where some guy downloaded the source and
built it, eventually generating ISOs.  That's a lot of work, by
the way.)  I believe Linksys does the same thing for it's Linux-based
router.

If you read RMS's original essays on Free Software, what he wanted
was access to the source of commercial software, and the right to
fix things and give the fix to his neighbor.  The details of distribution
isn't the issue, it's the right to fix the source and pass it on.

Duke



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