[Fsf-friends] Please welcome the Akshaya project

[Ramanraj K]

Anil wrote:

>CDIT has distributed  copies of RH9  to state IT mission. 
>
If CDIT, which appears to be a not-for-profit organisation, did the 
distribution free of charge, or without profit, then none can have any 
cause to complain, because the RedHat license guidelines clearly say:

<quote>
We consider non-commercial redistribution to be any distribution for 
which you charge no more than the cost of replicating the CD and a 
reasonable handling fee. If any copies are to be distributed to 
individuals outside your organization, either the label or an 
accompanying printed document must indicate that: (a) the distribution 
is provided without any warranties (unless you elect to provide those 
warranties); and (b) this distribution does not include support (either 
technical or developer) services from Red Hat but that such services may 
be purchased from Red Hat separately.
</quote>

Could Anil clarify if CDIT complied with these formalities?  If yes 
then, the whole controversy appears to be based on rumours rather than 
on facts.  The spirit of the free software movement aims to enable 
sharing and if a state comes forward with initiatives to promote use of 
free software, it should be appreciated and welcomed, particularly when 
it appears to be as lawful as it could be.  As Anil suspects, the 
reasons for the mischievous propaganda against use of free software 
should be available soon.

Returning to another thread, at the start of this month,  I had written 
about Free Software CD's (Clean Distributions), stressing the need to 
create distributions based on Knoppix, and compiling software from the 
sources. Rishi Gangoly showed  interest, and recently RMS pointed to 
people working in this direction.  FreeBSD developers are also excited 
about bootable FreeBSDCDR's, and lot of activity is proceeding in this 
direction to enable simple custom distributions.  It would be ideal if a 
state could release its own custom distribution, to suit its purposes, 
without relying on any commercial packages for spreading the use of free 
software in the state.

Promoting free software with other distributions like Debian, Knoppix or 
FreeBSD should be less cumbersome.  But, the ideal choice is to create 
one's own free software distribution.


References:
http://www.akshaya.net