[Info-vax] OT(?): Linux: developed by corporates. *NOT* developed by unpaid volunteers.

[David Froble]

Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2015-03-29, David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>> johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk wrote:
>>> Various Linuxes may be free to download but there are lots of people
>>> being paid by their big-name employers to do Linux development. The 
>>> proportion of input from unpaid volunteers isn't quite negligible but
>>> it seems it's a lot smaller than you've been thinking (how does 13%
>>> sound?).
>> Linux started as something that was free, and if anyone wants to play in 
>> that sandbox, it's my impression that they cannot charge for the OS. 
>> Right?  So, from that perspective, it's free.
>>
> 
> Wrong. Totally, totally wrong. Sorry David. :-)

I could be wrong.  I've been wrong before.  Same old territory for me.

> You can charge as much as you like for a Linux distribution but what
> you can't do is to refuse to ship the GPL source code used to build
> that binary distribution to your customers.
> 
> Even though you can try to encourage them not to, you also can't
> stop your customers from further redistributing the source code from
> the GPL parts of your distribution.
> 
> This is how Scientific Linux and Centos can exist. They take the RHEL
> source code, strip out any remaining RH copyrighted material and
> build a new distribution based around the RHEL source code.
> 
> It's also why, when you buy (say) home routers with GPL based software
> in them, the router comes with a little slip of paper saying how you
> can obtain the source code for the GPL parts of the software in the
> router.

Can you point out in what you've written that contradicts what I wrote? 
  You're throwing out some information, which I have no problem with, 
but I don't see how it contradicts in any way what I (obviously 
erroneously) wrote.

Specifically, does, or can, anyone charge a fee for the OS ?

>> I'll ask, if Apache wasn't free, do you think there might be more 
>> competitors for that market?  I do.  It's the "free" that stifles 
>> competition.  Who is going to spend money to develop a product to 
>> compete with a free product?  Would you?
> 
> No. If there wasn't a free option, the existing commercial options
> would cost a lot more and have a fraction of the functionality.
> The free option keeps the commercial vendors on their toes and
> requires them to product a product better than the free one.

That's a good argument, but ....

Are there commercial versions of Apache?  Specifically, those with a 
license (or other) fee ?

> If a particular product range can't be enhanced over a free version
> then you can still make money by selling top quality support for
> the free version.

Yes, that's what some vendors are doing.  But, that's charging for the 
support, not for the product, right ?

We all know I don't get out much, but it's been my impression that GPL 
code cannot be resold for a fee.  Is this correct?