[PLUG] Question about companies and open source applications

[Arun Khan]

On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 9:17 AM, Amarendra Godbole
<amarendra.godbole at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 7:42 AM, Nikhil Karkare <nkarkare at gmail.com> wrote:
>> No. I did not buy the product. I already have the biggest Linux deployment
>> amongst schools, with GCompris installed. I don't think talking will help
>> much, but worth a try.
>> Should I make a list of companies who do this? Maybe make a blacklist which
>> is publicly available?
> [...]
>
.....

> shout from the rooftop about how evil these companies are. All those
> people who are encouraging you on the list will run away at the drop
> of a hat, if it comes to the court of law.
>
> IMHO, best option to use and adopt Linux, is appreciate the goodies it
> provides, and use them while keeping the legalities to the
> foss-legal-eagles.

I agree to an some extent about your point i.e. having the financial
purse and time bandwidth for legal recourse.

IMO, the FOSS legal eagles would not be aware of incidents such as the
OP posted unless the community brings it to their notice.   Thus, I
feel that if you come across abuse of the lic.,  then it should be
brought to the attention of organizations like FSF.  They have the
legal and financial wherewithal  to determine if the case deserves
merit and pursue it.

> And you asking about freedom? Well, you have to
> look at the BSD license then.

This would be applicable to the content/software developed by the OP.
In this particular case, he is using software authored by others and
is bound by the original lic.  They may not be BSD.

My two cents.
-- 
Arun Khan
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