[CentOS] A minor beef

[Bryan J. Smith]

Tim Edwards <tim at registriesltd.com.au> wrote:
> I think the Fedora people would have something to say about
> that: http://fedora.redhat.com/about/
> What exactly is non-open source in Fedora?

I'll go through the full package list in the next few weeks
and point a few things out.  The key is that they are 100%
redistributable, no always open source.  There are always
going to be binary and other support in packages that are
allowed to be redistributed, but they are not available in
source.

> The commercial Mandriva and Suse (I'm assuming you mean
> Mandrake Corporate Server and SLES)

No, I mean SuSE Linux Professional, as well as the various
Mandriva memberships, allow you to tap such.  That's what
people compare pure Debian, Fedora, CentOS, etc... to.

That was my original point.

> The downloadable Mandriva and Suse are purely open source,

Yes, Mandriva is available in a purely 100% redistributable
form.  And that form is _different_ than the paid
memberships.

No in the case of SuSE, as of the SuSE Linux 9.3 DVD.  Novell
was still shipping quite a bit, probably for upward
compatibility -- and that included the downloadable "FTP DVD"
on their site.

> the questionable multimedia stuff is in seperate 
> repos and isn't included on the CDs, nor is closed-source
> stuff like Java.

That might be the case of "pure" OpenSuSE right now.
If that is the case, great!

But it wasn't as of SuSE Linux 9.3.
And that included the downloadable "FTP DVD" from Novell's
site.

I know Novell was trying to be pro-active on this as early as
SuSE Linux 9.2.  But they didn't make the cut as of 9.3. 
They were still going through packages, plus they didn't want
to break compatibility.

I heard second-hand on SuSE 10.0, so I don't have first-hand
knowledge, I have to admit that.



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