Re: [seul-edu] SEUL Licensing (was: Our presence at trade shows)

[Doug Loss <dloss@suscom.net>]

Roger Dingledine wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 30, 2000 at 08:47:09AM -0700, Ray Olszewski wrote:

> > Personally, I think that in our approach to schools, we are too stuck in the
> > trap that Linux is free (in a financial sense). It encourages schools to
> > want to be on the receiving end of largesse, rather than to commit resources
> > to support an OS, and related apps, that are valuable for reasons that go
> > beyond their cost.
>
> This is an excellent excellent point.
>
> Can you elaborate on this, and what we might be able to do about it?
> (Perhaps this deserves its own thread...It could be a good piece for
> Freshmeat as well, if we want to write it up.)
>

I think that's a good idea.  Ray, if you have the time I hope you'll work on
this.  I'm sure Jeff Covey and the others at Freshmeat would be interested in it
as an editorial.  I know when I talk to teachers, I stress the "free as in 'free
sharing of information'" aspect of the Linux and free software movement, as that's
something that the academic community is very familiar and comfortable with.

> > Even Roger's suggestions run into problems here. If he is right that "if we
> > demonstrate that it's useful, then truly free software will spring up to
> > replace it," how can we conceivably make a pitch to commercial companies to
> > port their software (without concealing our intent)?
>
> Well, we do have a pitch: http://www.seul.org/pub/howto/CPAH.html
> My cursory re-skimming tells me that Doug sidestepped this issue in
> writing his howto.
>

Actually, I didn't.  I don't necessarily believe that free equivalents to every
possible commercial program will appear, and I wanted to encourage applications
for Linux for which there are no free equivalents available or on the horizon.
This is in parallel with encouraging people to write such free equivalents for
whatever they're interested in.  My primary goal is to increase the range of
quality programs for Linux that are useful in education, commercial or free.  I'd
prefer free, but I don't want commercial organizations to think they're obligated
to give away their product just because we'd like them to.

> I will leave formulating the seul/edu goal to, well, the discussion at
> hand. Doug?

I hope everyone realizes that I've been voicing my personal goals and opinions,
not something that applies to SEUL/edu in general.  Anything like that will have
to be distilled from this discussion (and probably some others) as Roger said.
Let's hear from some other folks besides just the handfull who have weighed in so
far, OK?

--
Doug Loss                 God is a comedian playing
Data Network Coordinator  to an audience too afraid
Bloomsburg University     to laugh.
dloss@bloomu.edu                Voltaire