[Glastonbury] My CUPS floweth not ...

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 10:03:00PM +0000, Ian Dickinson wrote:
> Kelvin McNulty <kelvin24 at gcircle.co.uk> wrote: 
> <big snip here>
> > and am also becoming aware of
> > Debian's status as what I 
> > believe is the only genuinely 100 percent royalty
> > free Linux distribution. It 
> > does seem from your messages that CUPS does not
> > compromise that status, 
> > whereas something like StarOffice would, I imagine,
> > if it was included as 
> > part of the distribution. Though OpenOffice.org
> > would not. StarOffice is 
> > included as part of the SuSE distribution that I
> > currently use, though I don't have it installed. 
It's quite possible that SuSE licensed it from Sun
for a pittance. If you use StarOffice under SuSE, you
may also want SO under Windows - which is a few quid
at PC World, for example - Sun benefit.
> I've never used StarOffice so I don't know anything
> about it.  But if it's included on the install disks
> for an otherwise free Linix distro I can't imagine
> that there's anything illegal or immoral about
> installing it.  It depends entirely on what the
> license terms say.
No, there's nothing illegal about _you_ installing it.
The nearest example I can think of - SuSE used to provide
an ftp install of their distribution and also "Live CD" versions
which couldn't be installed to hard disk.  Buried _very_ deep
in their paperwork was the provision that you could give away
SuSE to other people provided that you didn't make any money
and didn't trade on the CD's being SuSE. Not until Novell took
over were they willing to just distribute CD images openly.
Similarly, though at one time Red Hat was mirrored everywhere -
now you can't have Red Hat CD images - so there's Pink Tie / White Box
or whatever.
>  
> > So copying the discs and passing them on would 
> > infringe copyright somewhere...
> Maybe, maybe not.  Most likely not.  Thing is, when
> you install a piece of software and it says "blah blah
> blah click here if you accept these terms", and, like
> 99.99% of the populace you skip over it and click
> there to accept, that's the thing that determines what
> you can and can't copy.  If you care about it, read
> the license before you accept. If you basically trust
> in the intrinsic goodness of your fellow
> man^wperson^wcarbon-based lifeform, then go ahead,
> click there to accept, and sleep easy at night.
Click through licences may still be binding :(
> 
HTH - IANAL although I did train as one.

Andy