Re: [MiNT] old KGMD or new NMD?

[Martin-Eric Racine <q-funk@pp.fishpool.com>]

On Fri, 5 Feb 1999, Bernd Ebert wrote:
> > You sell the cd, fine, get money out of it, fine etc. no prob.
> > the cd should be payable, of course, no doubt on that. But the
> > distribution imo, shouldn't.
> 
> Its just the same like every linux-distribution. If you are downloading the 
> redhat-distribution you are missing some gimmicks like the X-Metro-Server.
> The Distribution _is_ allowed to be copied. The only archive you can't copy
> is the administration-software.
> 
> > Anyway, i am kinda deceived to learn that some part of mint98 are
> > copyrighted.
> 
> As I said only the administration-Software and some drivers that are not
> part of the distribution itself but part of some contributed software, like
> for e.g. applixware on suse-distributions or metro-x on redhat-distributions.

That sounds perfectly reasonable.

I remember reading a Linus Thorvalds interview where they asked him
if it was okay for Caldera or Red Hat to make money on _his_ freeware.

His answer was that it's perfectly fine, because those companies provide 
customer support to those who bought their distribution, which is not
often possible on downloaded freeware.

Given your above statement, I think your CD provides the same kind
of "value-added support", so it is quite welcome! ;-)

However, I really think that you should release the drivers.  We've
already got a _lot_ of problems finding Ethernet solutions on Atari,
so if those Panther drivers allow using NE2005 cards (or something
similar) on our hardware, then everyone should benefit from them.

The key point of Linus' reply was that, the idea behind making the OS
completely freeware is to ensure that the basic production tools are
freely accessible to everyone.

Hardware drivers certainly fit the "basic tools" category, hence
why I think you should release them.

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  Martin-Eric Racine * http://www.pp.fishpool.com/~q-funk/M-E/
  The Atari TT030 Homepage * http://members.tripod.com/~TT030/
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