FYI: UnitedLinux "certified binaries" will not to be freely available

[John Abreau]

Bob Keyes <bob at sinister.com> writes:

> I am pretty unhappy with United Linux, and the next time I write software
> I am going to make sure they can't do with my software what they've just
> tried to do with Linux & GPL'd sofware.
> 
> I'd rather linux remain 'minor league' then to become what they're trying
> to  make it. If they want software that they can do whatever they want
> with, commercially, then they should just go grab BSD code and run with
> it. That's what it's for.

I remember when I first heard about GNU and the GPL; one of my friends in
college gave me a BCS membership for christmas in 1984, and we went to the
December 1984 BCS Macintosh meeting. After the meeting I was talking with
Ric Ford and Rick LePage from BCS' MacTechGroup (the Macintosh Programmers
SIG), and one of them gave me a copy of their "MacInTouch" zine. One of
the papers they had published in it was the GNU Manifesto, in which RMS
outlined a number of ways that the corporate world could try to co-opt
the Free Software community.

My concerns about UnitedLinux stem from the tone of the press releases,
and discussions about it, which to me feel suspiciously similar to the 
potential threats to the community that RMS had outlined back then.


-- 
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix 
ICQ 28611923 / AIM abreauj / JABBER jabr at jabber.org / YAHOO abreauj
Email jabr at blu.org / WWW http://www.abreau.net / PGP-Key-ID 0xD5C7B5D9
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"An idealist is just a farsighted pragmatist."  -Anon


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