Originally posted by ninez
View Post
Announcement
Collapse
No announcement yet.
SteamOS Didn't Use Ubuntu Over Legal Issues
Collapse
X
-
Originally posted by dee. View PostThe problem is that Canonical now wants to use these license terms to dictate what Mint can and cannot do, mostly in relation to the OEM market. They want to prevent Mint from competing against Canonical for the same OEM partners. This is problematic and against the GPL license. The GPL explicitly forbids adding these kinds of restrictions to GPL-licensed software.
Comment
-
Originally posted by rhavenn View PostNo, Canonical is perfectly fine in locking their compiled files behind a pay wall or legal wall. The only thing the GPL forces them to do is to provide the source openly. They don't have to provide access to compiled binaries. See RHEL who has locked all their binary packages behind a pay wall.
Comment
-
Originally posted by dyfet View PostNo they are not simply locking them up behind a paywell, which indeed would have been valid and much like what RedHat does. They are instead telling Mint where they can and cannot re-distribute the files that they do receive, which is NOT legally permitted by the GNU GPL. RedHat does NOT tell it's customers what they can and cannot do with the software they receive, which markets they may use RHEL in for their own products and services, etc.
Comment
-
Originally posted by Vim_User View PostDo you have a link to the content of the negotiations between Canonical and Mint? Or do you just guess that it is this way?
"...An e-mail to the Linux Mint project asking for details yielded much better results. Clement Lefebvre responded the following day and, while he wasn't able to go into specific details as talks with Canonical are still on-going, he was able to share a few pieces of information. When asked if Canonical was hoping to collect a fee for using their binary packages, Clem responded, "Money isn't a primary concern. Although the original fee was in the hundreds of thousands pounds, it was easily reduced to a single digit figure. The licensing aims at restricting what Mint can and cannot do, mostly in relation to the OEM market, to prevent Mint from competing with Canonical in front of the same commercial partners..."
Comment
-
A direct link...
Originally posted by Vim_User View PostDo you have a link to the content of the negotiations between Canonical and Mint? Or do you just guess that it is this way?
"...An e-mail to the Linux Mint project asking for details yielded much better results. Clement Lefebvre responded the following day and, while he wasn't able to go into specific details as talks with Canonical are still on-going, he was able to share a few pieces of information. When asked if Canonical was hoping to collect a fee for using their binary packages, Clem responded, "Money isn't a primary concern. Although the original fee was in the hundreds of thousands pounds, it was easily reduced to a single digit figure. The licensing aims at restricting what Mint can and cannot do, mostly in relation to the OEM market, to prevent Mint from competing with Canonical in front of the same commercial partners..."
Comment
-
Originally posted by dyfet View Posthttp://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20131209#qa
"...An e-mail to the Linux Mint project asking for details yielded much better results. Clement Lefebvre responded the following day and, while he wasn't able to go into specific details as talks with Canonical are still on-going, he was able to share a few pieces of information. When asked if Canonical was hoping to collect a fee for using their binary packages, Clem responded, "Money isn't a primary concern. Although the original fee was in the hundreds of thousands pounds, it was easily reduced to a single digit figure. The licensing aims at restricting what Mint can and cannot do, mostly in relation to the OEM market, to prevent Mint from competing with Canonical in front of the same commercial partners..."
Comment
-
Yes, I DO check for bugs other than in computers!
Originally posted by smitty3268 View PostDo you always check the bottom of your vehicle for attached tracking devices every time you use it? Because if you're really a target, not keeping a smartphone around is really nothing. It'd be childs play to stick a listening device in the walls of your residence.
I do not host meetings at my house, and do check places where power is available for running long-term bugging devices or any of the simple, obvious tricks. They never got into the machine they stole from me in a 2008 raid timed to miss me, so I must be doing something right. Any battery powered bugs planted then have long since died, and I've checked the power leads for AC-powered additions. Still, you never meet in a place the pigs have been inside. The few pinholes in the walls of the only room that counts have been individually probed with wires for any objects behind them. There are no fixtures on the ceiling at all, ruling out an otherwise excellent place to hide a camera. I don't even have a computer in the same ROOM now that the one stolen in the raid was in. Air vents were checked, even though those are a truly useless place to hide audio mics. Nothing's perfect, but the more you make them work, the less they can do. That's how all this kind of tradecraft works.
In my neighborhood the listening post would have to be a long way away, meaning with my experience with RF devices they would risk getting caught by signal strength showing up one some piece of my equipment or another. A captured bug I would raise a huge stink about, probably auctioning it. There was a case where some alleged ALF activists found a crude GPS tracker nearly a foot long on their car, and got either $1,500 or $3,000 (I forget which) for it on Ebay. No raid ensued after the debugging.
Comment
-
Originally posted by rhavenn View PostNo, Canonical is perfectly fine in locking their compiled files behind a pay wall or legal wall. The only thing the GPL forces them to do is to provide the source openly. They don't have to provide access to compiled binaries. See RHEL who has locked all their binary packages behind a pay wall.
If they only wanted money in compensation for the distribution of the binaries, or the usage of the repositories, there would be no problem (legally, at least). But placing additional restrictions on the usage of those binaries is forbidden by the GPL.
Comment
Comment