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On Thursday 27 April 2006 09:02, Tom Potts wrote: > > Alas its worse than that: > http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060424164142296 > Tom > That's a pretty good article. The main problem I have with Lin/Freespire, in addition to their love for proprietary software, is that they take a lot from the community (i.e. the Free Software available through their Click'n'Run warehouse, which Linspire users have to pay to access) and give *nothing* back. Even when they do release something as Free/open source (because they're required to do so because they've used GPL'd code) they make it unacceptably difficult for people to use the source they make available - e.g. sources which don't compile, apps which have silly dependencies on things in Linspire so you can't use them on other distros, etc. etc. As far as I'm aware when they modify a piece of software they don't send their changes to the original developer for inclusion like other distros do, they just chuck the source somewhere and forget about it. Not only do they support and sell proprietary software, but they develop the stuff too. An example being Lassist Reminders[1] for which they charge $49.95 and do not publish the source. It will be interesting to see how many people contribute to their "community-driven" distribution. Linspire have never paid any attention to the community before, so I can only hope the community returns the favour. Regards, David. [1] http://tinyurl.com/zvtx4 -- David Johnson www.david-web.co.uk - My Personal Website www.penguincomputing.co.uk - Need a Web Developer? - The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe. FAQ: www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html