Re: Fwd: Re: X11 non open-source? (a solution?)

[George Bonser <grep@oriole.sbay.org>]

On Thu, 9 Apr 1998 arma@seul.org wrote:

>   Why not propose a deal, with the Open Group.  A special Linux development
> one.  Distributions, like Debian and others get to pay only partial fee
> due to their "small" size, and the fact that they are a "growing" distributions
> which would get hurt (possibly permanently) if forced to pay full fee.  They
> would in turn, increase the fee as their buisness would increase.
> 
>   I see no reason why such a deal could not take place, and I would suspect
> that it could be made with Trolltech as well.  If done, it would solve the
> "licensing" and it would allow the distributions to make user interfaces,
> on strongly supported grounds.
> 

I think you are misunderstanding the license. Debian would never have to
buy the commercial license because Debian does not sell Debian.  Now, if I
personally wanted to sell Debian on CDROM, I would have to purchase the
$7500 license even if I was selling it for only $3.

Basicly it puts CheapBytes and the like out of business if it was not for
XFree86 to save the day. 

Red Hat would have to buy the license as would anyone that sold CD
archives of Red Hat or Slackware or Debian.  As a matter of fact, if
X11R6.4 includes some neat feature and I sell a program that uses a
feature that only R6.4 has, I have the buy the damned license even though
I am NOT SELLING X!

It basicly taxes the small-time distributors of CDROM's out of business.


George Bonser

If I had a catchy quip, it would be here.

http://www.debian.org
Debian/GNU Linux ... the maintainable operating system.

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