Subj : Linspire 5.0
To   : CHARLES ANGELICH
From : MARTIN ATKINS
Date : Sat Sep 17 2005 02:49 am

-=> CHARLES ANGELICH wrote to MARTIN ATKINS <=-



 CA>> When a poor man steals it might be that there is no
 CA>> justice in the land. When a man who is _not_ poor steals
 CA>> it is always because there is no justice in the man.

 MA> There you go again spouting you ignorance in an attempt to
 MA> put someone down.

 CA> There you go again with your "No, that's not right" knee-jerk
 CA> replies.

"No, that's not right" Looks more like one of your replies than one of mine.

 MA> If Linspire is open source it is legal to hack the code and
 MA> distribute it provided the original code accompanies the
 MA> hack and is where possible documented. It is also good form
 MA> to submit the hack to the application maintainer. Linspire
 MA> does not hold license over open source software.

 CA> Blah blah blah ... yes we _all_ know what opensource is but we
 CA> do enjoy the never ending repetition by the lay ministry of the
 CA> church of opensource. :-)

I consider myself a dedicated member of the congregation. I have never
pushed Linux on anyone however if someone shows an interest and i think 
i can help them then i will throw my two penny worth in.

I am no expert but coming from a DOS/Win background i do believe i
understand the difficulties involved in starting on the road to Linux.

 CA> Every software application being made available by Linspire is
 CA> not freeware (or so I am told - I never checked). Regardless of
 CA> the status as freeware/opensource or 'other' the bit:

I have no experience with Linspire so in that respect we are both in the dark.
If however some of the apps are commercial then they would have their own
licensing arrangement and of course it would be incumbent on the user to
abide by them. I would speculate that Linspire probably doesn't hold
license over those apps either. Perhaps if someone has it installed
they may clarify the situation for us.  

 "CS>> 2. Obtaining and installing software.

 CS>> If anyone is interested, I can show them how to legally
 CS>> overcome 2 above without using the pay service. Either
 CS>> send me email or post a question to me in the Linux echo."

 CA> Sure sounds like offering assistance to avoid paying any monies
 CA> to Linspire even though it is one of the ways Linspire tries to
 CA> make a few pesos. If I could find a way to stop YOUR paychecks
 CA> and offer it as 'advice' here on FIDO you'd chant a different
 CA> mantra I suspect?

For a start Charles Scaglione is offering to help Obtaining and installing 
software and in the next line he states he will show them how to do it
legally. This is not unusual in the open source world. Let's for the time 
being assume Linspire is entirely open source, then all they have done is
bundle other peoples hard work at no cost to them other than time.     

Some would accuse them of being nothing more than parasites. This is
not my view. I do not believe that making money from bundling is
immoral. Mandriva, Redhat, Suse and others do it. I say more power to them if
it makes Linux more usable to the general public but if they do that
they must play by the open source rules or get out the game.

I do not receive my pay check by piggy backing off the free labour of others. 
I would be interested to know if Linspire has a licensing clause with their 
public release. Linspire has already been in hot water when it came to
grief with Microsoft as Lindows. Seems they have no moral scruples when it
comes to free loading of anothers name. :-}

  
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