[UFO Chicago] free operating systems [was: Solaris 10?]

[Larry Garfield]

Carey Tyler Schug wrote:
> Does free in UFO refer to licensing costs or does it really mean "the 
> source is publicly available"?

Free as in speech, mostly, although if you're working with anything 
vaguely Unix-oid your chances of getting thrown out are pretty minimal. 
  (Unless you are a fan of SCO.  Then we bring out the rotten tomatoes.)

> Are RHEL and other "pay for it only" versions of Linux disqualified?

Just for the record, RHEL is not free-pizza, but it is, strictly 
speaking, still Free-speech.  You have to pay for the binary, but once 
you do you're allowed to get ALL of the source code (most of it GPL, 
some things BSD or MIT), and they've said multiple times they couldn't 
stop you from then distributing that source code even if they wanted to. 
  In fact, there are parties that do just that, take the RHEL source, 
compile it themselves, and sell a "RHEL-ish" distribution (the name of 
which I forget at the moment), perfectly legally.

-- 
Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
larry at garfieldtech.com		ICQ: 6817012

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of 
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an 
idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it 
to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the 
possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of 
it."  -- Thomas Jefferson