Parted Magic Continues Being Commercial-Only

[Vim_User]

AFAIK, with Red Hat what you pay is commercial support, kind of like with Ubuntu.

The cheapest RHEL subscription, 49$/year for the desktop edition, is only available with self-support. You are only paying for the updates/access to RHN.

The GPL states they can't stop redistribution, so "pirating" is not a valid term here.

Correct, as long as no trademarks and branding is involved. I don't use Parted Magic, so I can't say if that is the case here.

Having said this, I do consider that if the one doing the distribution wants to charge for it, and you want to use it, you should pay him, even though you have no obligation to

Indeed, but there are people on this forum that don't understand free software, though they claim otherwise (just to clarify, I do not mean mcirsta).
In the first thread about this topic there were even people that took the stand that only Windows users should have to pay for this and that they should get it for free because they use Linux. How can one favor open source and then feel entitled to dictate which user groups should have to pay for it and which not, based on such arbitrary things as which OS their use? As always hypocrisy is big on Phoronix forums.

[mcirsta]

One more thing, RH proved it can survive even with the 100% free CentOS, can Parted Magic do the same. If I am determined enough and make a CentOS style rebuild of the packages and the call it Parted Wonder what then ...
Anyway ... my only complain is with the $50 which I just find unjustified and I also want to see part of my money going to downstream projects otherwise you're just profiting from other people's work. I've seen lots and lots of companies doing this... oh it's open source and free ... well then let's just use it an pay nothing.
With RH I know for a fact that they're a huge contributor to Linux and while I don't expect the same with Parted Magic I do expect something.

[Vim_User]

One more thing, RH proved it can survive even with the 100% free CentOS, can Parted Magic do the same. If I am determined enough and make a CentOS style rebuild of the packages and the call it Parted Wonder what then ...
Anyway ... my only complain is with the $50 which I just find unjustified and I also want to see part of my money going to downstream projects otherwise you're just profiting from other people's work. I've seen lots and lots of companies doing this... oh it's open source and free ... well then let's just use it an pay nothing.
With RH I know for a fact that they're a huge contributor to Linux and while I don't expect the same with Parted Magic I do expect something.

So you mean because it is open source and free software the work that is actually done to assemble and test the distribution is worth nothing? Here a developer puts his time into creating a distribution and he wants to get paid for that time. If you think that you don't want to pay for his work then don't use it. If you use it his work must have a value for you, so pay for it.
That something is open source does not mean that there is no work involved and it does not mean that nobody should be paid for it. I am always amazed about that freeloader mindset of some people when it comes to software.

[a user]

I did pay for the original ISO as I said, I even have the paypal to prove it. The problem is you can't really compare this to RHEL which is massive but you're right in that I can go ahead and do some DIY. As it is though I'm working for another distro an other open source projects so I don't really have the time/willingness to go into this.
As I've said I did make a payment once and I do make regular donations to open source hardware ( I can prove it with the paypal bills if anyone wants to see them )...

absoultely nothing above is relevant.

but if this goes on I've no problem with pirating it even if it's not right/legal.

it is the creators right to charge or do with it product what ever he wants to. your opinion on this is absolutely unrelated to the question of "legitimating" piracy.

While I do understand...

i don't think so. your words imply contrary.

it I don't like being forced into paying

your problem. it sill doesn't give you any right to pirate, neither by moral or anything else.

and I don't like it when I'm asked an unreasonable amount.

it is not up to you define what is reasonable to demand and actually it doesn't matter at all if it is reasonable. if i want to charge 1Mio $ for 3 lines of code it is my perfect right. sure there are some circumstances where things have to controlled/limited but we are obviously not talking about such cases here.

Best of all you can't even download your ISO whenever you want ( I think the link is valid for 1 month ).
So yeah if I get mad and feel like it I might just go ahead and pirate it, who's going to do what about it ? Ask nicely, be reasonable and I'll pay.

the bad excuses of the dumbs.

i admitt i wasn't an angel always myself, but at least i didn't twisted the things just to justify so stupid like this.

[a user]

One more thing, RH proved it can survive even with the 100% free CentOS, can Parted Magic do the same. If I am determined enough and make a CentOS style rebuild of the packages and the call it Parted Wonder what then ...
Anyway ... my only complain is with the $50 which I just find unjustified and I also want to see part of my money going to downstream projects otherwise you're just profiting from other people's work. I've seen lots and lots of companies doing this... oh it's open source and free ... well then let's just use it an pay nothing.
With RH I know for a fact that they're a huge contributor to Linux and while I don't expect the same with Parted Magic I do expect something.

then don't buy and don't use this. end of story. if you need to then pay the price.

[brosis]

Well I never thought I'd see this day here but I did actually get Parted Magic from piratebay. I don't even feel I did anything wrong as I did pay for the distro initially, $5 is OK. Then I lost the ISO I've downloaded a just got a new copy from piratebay ( not really the latest though ).
$5 is OK, I can certainly agree with that but having not updates and $50/year is way too much considering it's all open source and free software.

The only thing "pirate" about what you did was to use a website that has "pirate" in its name. Nothing else. You used a legal distribution channel. However, I am not sure if Parted developer's ISO is all-GPL, because if its not (EULAs etc), then you can't legally do this. Hence my concern about this whole model.

One more thing, RH proved it can survive even with the 100% free CentOS, can Parted Magic do the same. If I am determined enough and make a CentOS style rebuild of the packages and the call it Parted Wonder what then ...
Anyway ... my only complain is with the $50 which I just find unjustified and I also want to see part of my money going to downstream projects otherwise you're just profiting from other people's work. I've seen lots and lots of companies doing this... oh it's open source and free ... well then let's just use it an pay nothing.
With RH I know for a fact that they're a huge contributor to Linux and while I don't expect the same with Parted Magic I do expect something.

RH itself is fine. You pay for patches, they do patches, everyone is happy.
They are the biggest contributor to Linux scene and Linux kernel. If you find it unjustified, wait till they make patches available everywhere via GPL guidelines.

[DrYak]

{as} I don't know any other distro with has many disk utility on their live version

For the record, there's System Rescue CD
It has tons of disk utilities, including GParted, Windows NT password recovery/reset, antivirus, root-kit detection, and including tons of others.
It's free for download.