[ghostscript] Re: bitkeeper

Larry McVoy (lm@bitmover.com)
Mon, 05 Oct 1998 23:42:41 -0600

: Larry McVoy writes:
: >It is my opinion that you should seriously consider products of this
: >nature. The RedHat approach of just say no is bogus - all it means is
: >that you have to go down load the latest ghostscript because the 3 year
: >old Redhat version doesn't talk to whatever the latest printers are.
:
: Um, Larry, I hate to contradict you, but if you read the Ghostscript
: license you would find that it is the Ghostscript license that is getting
: in the way here, not Red Hat Software. We are explicitly forbidden from
: including those recent versions of Ghostscript in our product.

That's not quite true. You are explicitly forbidden from including
those recent versions in your product //without paying for them//.
If you want to work out a deal with the Ghostscript folks, you can.

This is a great example, by the way. Ghostscript is a non trivial project
and the people doing it are making their living from doing it. I'm sure
it is most annoying to RedHat that other people would like to collect some
money for the software that they write and actively support but RedHat
distributes, but while annoying, it is not unreasonable. No offense to
RedHat (or any of the other distributions) but it is quite unreasonable
that only the distributor make money. In the hardware/software world,
VARs take a 15-30% cut, not 100%.

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