Hi Hetz and Oren
On Sat, 24 Feb 2001, Oren Held wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Feb 2001, Hetz Ben Hamo wrote:
>
> > > 2. yast is good indeed. but it's not free and it has a stupid license as
> > > far as I understood. I prefer a GPLed program.
> >
> > Bzzt! I definately don't agree with you. USE the right tool for doing the
> >job! if you got many options, then take the one that you preffer, but
> > disqualifying a product due to it's license? thats THEIR programs and their
> > rights to even release it without a source code! yast is not useful other
> > then in SuSE Linux. So you don't want to use it? fine, do it manually or use
> > webmin or Linuxconf - but everyone has his full right to release a product
> > under any license he want.
There seems to be a certain point you miss, read on...
>
> I heard from some people that the yast license is pretty 'sly' and some
> bad things about it. I prefer GPL not because I want to see its source or
> modify it (Although maybe it could be nice), but because I want to be free
> to use it.
What do you mean by "free to use"? You can always get the latest
'evaluation' SuSE distro and use yast for free. But had it been GPLed, you
waould have more...
Had it been GPLed you could also modify it, and distribute your
changes. In other words, this would have allowed you to make your own
version of SuSE, and distribute it.
Indeed, in the case of redhat, debain, and slackware, there are other
distros based on those distros. Mainly on redhat. SuSE don't want that to
happen to them.
While I appretiate their concern, and believe it is totally legitimate of
them (I know packaging, QA, support, etc., not to mention sponserring,
costs money), I personally believe that this choice is not wise of them.
But there are other consequences: Creating your own customized
redhat/mandrake/whatever CD/network install (not kick-start) is
relatively painless. I believe that with SuSE this is not so much the
case.
> > Disqualifying a program that you need to use just because it's not GPL is not
> > a smart move in my book - unless you want to redistribute the code or doing
> > other things with it.
Not *just* because it is not GPLed. Indeed what Oren wrote before
indicates that he does not understand the benefits of GPL. The aim of GPL
is to create a large free code base. This code base can include installers
for linux distros.
All-in-all I think that redhat's users has benefited much from the large
number of redhat-derivative distros. I would like to encourge distros that
allow me to modify every spesific detail, and redistibute. I know other
here may not agree.
--
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir
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