[CentOS] A minor beef

Tue Nov 29 09:17:24 UTC 2005
Bryan J. Smith <thebs413 at earthlink.net>

On Tue, 2005-11-29 at 18:17 -0500, ryan wrote:
> Its very debatable. What is "illegal redistribution" in one country is not in 
> another. 

Please name a country?

> Of course, I'm sure MS doesn't like it when third world countries engage in 
> rampant copying/distribution of Windows and Office - but I bet most of those 
> countries have no laws on their books that make software "piracy" illegal. 

Bull!  They _do_.  They just don't enforce them!  Lack of enforcement
does _not_ mean "legal."  Just because the piracy rate in Japan is 92%
and places like Singapore is 99% (oh the irony of their "values" ;-)
does _not_ mean it's "legal" to illegally copy works.

They just don't enforce it.  _Huge_ difference!

> What is illegal in Redmond, USA is not necessarily illegal in the rest of the 
> world and vice versa.

But countries that have signed certain international treaties and laws
on copyrights with the United States _are_ bound by them.  Even China is
bound by man agreements they have signed, and their lack of enforcement
is a powerful bargaining tool right now with their membership (or
potential membership) in various organizations.

Again, we are _way_off_ the path of my _original_ point.  You guys can
really argue to the point of absolute futility on these matters, but
CentOS and its repositories -- like Fedora Core/Extras, official Debian
repositories, etc... -- are designed so they are 100% redistributable
(and are not necessarily 100% open source, read all the licenses ;-).

That way there are _no_ legal issues with redistribution into another
project, for consultants and integrators, etc...  If you really "don't
care" and just freely redistribute Gentoo, Ubuntu, Knoppix (non-official
releases with 100% pure Debian), etc... then please do _not_ step foot
in any corporation I consult for or work at.  ;->


-- 
Bryan J. Smith   mailto:b.j.smith at ieee.org
http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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