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Thread: A few general questions, lets discuss.

  1. #1
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    A few general questions, lets discuss.

    These are nothing too technical so I figured I'd put them here. Just a general collection of things I've been wondering about, as a newbie.

    1 - I found people on EBay selling freely available Linux distros, is that within the "rules"? They weren't overpriced or anything, but somehow it just seems wrong to me. How do you personally feel about this sort of thing?

    2 - I recently installed Kanotix and got rid of the Knoppix install I was using. Is it okay to ask Kanotix related questions on the Knoppix board? I've seen a few, but still, I don't want to annoy anyone. The Knoppix board seems to get a lot more traffic, and I guess they are pretty similar distros after all.

    3 - Any musicians here? I had the perfect music setup in Windows but I wiped it, then when I went to re-install, my restore CD wouldn't let me. I managed to get an, ahem, "special version" installed but I hit soundcard problems and gave up, seeing as I'm not interested in dual booting really. So my current struggle is getting music apps happening under Linux but I'm not having much luck understanding the whole audio thing. I'd love to have some general discussion with you if you make music in a Linux environment. Here is just one example of my problems: I start Audacity and it says "Error initialising audio - There was an error initialising the audio i/o layer. You will not be able to play or record audio. - Error: Host error." I also installed ReBorn and nothing happens when I hit Play (got it working under other distros though). I feel like I can advance when I learn the basics of audio, but nothing I read makes sense to me. At the moment, I am just clicking buttons and choosing ALSA and whatever else, but I'd really love to understand what I'm actually doing here!

    Thanks guys.

  2. #2
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    1 - I found people on EBay selling freely available Linux distros, is that within the "rules"? They weren't overpriced or anything, but somehow it just seems wrong to me. How do you personally feel about this sort of thing?
    It's allowed under the GNU GPL. From the GPL FAQ:

    Q. Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?
    A. Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)

    Q. Does the GPL allow me to charge a fee for downloading the program from my site?
    A. Yes. You can charge any fee you wish for distributing a copy of the program. If you distribute binaries by download, you must provide "equivalent access" to download the source--therefore, the fee to download source may not be greater than the fee to download the binary.

    2 - I recently installed Kanotix and got rid of the Knoppix install I was using. Is it okay to ask Kanotix related questions on the Knoppix board? I've seen a few, but still, I don't want to annoy anyone. The Knoppix board seems to get a lot more traffic, and I guess they are pretty similar distros after all.
    You'll have better luck asking Kanotix-related questions on the Kanotix forum -- for one thing, to my knowledge, Kano (Kanotix's creator) doesn't post here. But he often answers questions there.

  3. #3
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    Thanks eco2geek, there's still a few things I don't understand about GPL but I'll keep reading over the FAQ and I'll get it eventually. You're right about the Kanotix board, it may have less traffic but it still has a bunch of dedicated users (much like here) so I got answers pretty quick there. Cheers.

  4. #4
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    >>
    I found people on EBay selling freely available Linux distros, is that within the "rules"?
    >>

    (grin) It is a bit rude though, isn't it ... the hide ...


    >>
    Q. Does the GPL allow me to charge a fee for downloading the program from my site?
    A. Yes. You can charge any fee you wish for distributing a copy of the program. If you distribute binaries by download, you must provide "equivalent access" to download the source--therefore, the fee to download source may not be greater than the fee to download the binary.
    >>

    "The fee to down-load source", i think it means that you can charge for the service ... if your providing GPLed binaries you must make the source freely available. In the GPL they mention that you can't restrict a persons access to the source. So, if you were to charge for the souce as well, i think that could be interpreted as restricting access. So i think, the source would have to be part and parcel of any binary provision. It doesn't have to come with the binary, but must be available. For a source only provision, i'm not sure ... i suppose you could impose a fee there. But it would be a really wierd thing to do


    jm

  5. #5
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    No .. these folks on EbayAmazon /Private sites provide a useful service
    There might be a minor issue asto whether they compiled the stuff from the sources or just copied the iso .. may be the latter, but they downloaded, they burnt the cd/dvd and will mail it you.
    You are saved the trouble of being shut down by cablevision when using bittorrent to download 4G images .. and countless hours of fighting with dumb customer service guys !!! or you don't have the bandwidth at dial up to download 4G CD's and this is the only way to get a copy.

    GPL says nothing about selling .. all it says is that if you have "enhance" the base work, you have to provide the enhancement to others free of any enucumbrances . For the past 15+ years we have used Gnc-C compiler and the support for it was provided by a company that typically charged $10K for providing you a clean compiled copy (and a promise to fix the bugs some day if you find them).


    Other issues .. I guess the moderator decides what's appropriate where .. generally kanotix is allowed (me thinks) ..

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by winsnomore
    No .. these folks on EbayAmazon /Private sites provide a useful service
    There might be a minor issue asto whether they compiled the stuff from the sources or just copied the iso .. may be the latter, but they downloaded, they burnt the cd/dvd and will mail it you.
    You are saved the trouble of being shut down by cablevision when using bittorrent to download 4G images .. and countless hours of fighting with dumb customer service guys !!! or you don't have the bandwidth at dial up to download 4G CD's and this is the only way to get a copy.
    I hardly see the advantage of having the capacity of a cable system if you can't download a 4 Gig ISO on it. If some "service" provider is really shutting people down because they actually use the service, customers should migrate fast.

    Expecting their support people to have much sense or know anything at all about BitToreent is a different issue. It's not likely to happen. But BitTorrent is just another Internet aplication as far as any service provider should be concerned.

    What what you say of people selling copies of CDs and DVDs is correct, one important thing shouold be added to it: We've seen over and over again the importance of burning at a slow speed, Fast speed burns may work on some system but not work on others, or behave strangely, or even boot but take over 5 minutes to boot. Slow speed burns very fequently correct this. Personally I don't expect that anyone selling burnt media on the electronic bay of theives is burning them at a slow speed, certainly not if they don't claim they are (and even then I have my doubts). They simply are not tieing up their system for over 20 minutes to burn a CD when they can crank out something they can hawk in 2 minutes, and can just blame the buyers system or plead ignorance if the CD doesn't boot. So anyone considering buying a CD that way should consider that warning.


    Quote Originally Posted by winsnomore
    Other issues .. I guess the moderator decides what's appropriate where .. generally kanotix is allowed (me thinks) ..
    We're generally pretty easy about it, particularly if there is cross-over with Knoppix. Hard core discussion of a non-Knoppix distro and non-Knoppix issues might be moved to the Other LIve CD's forum. And it is frequently pointed out that Kantonix has it's own forum where you can expect to get better response on Kantonix issues. All the moderators ask here is that you try to find an appropriate forum for your post.

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by winsnomore
    No .. these folks on EbayAmazon /Private sites provide a useful service
    There might be a minor issue asto whether they compiled the stuff from the sources or just copied the iso .. may be the latter, but they downloaded, they burnt the cd/dvd and will mail it you.
    You are saved the trouble of being shut down by cablevision when using bittorrent to download 4G images .. and countless hours of fighting with dumb customer service guys !!! or you don't have the bandwidth at dial up to download 4G CD's and this is the only way to get a copy.
    Quote Originally Posted by Harry Kuhman
    I hardly see the advantage of having the capacity of a cable system if you can't download a 4 Gig ISO on it. If some "service" provider is really shutting people down because they actually use the service, customers should migrate fast.

    Expecting their support people to have much sense or know anything at all about BitToreent is a different issue. It's not likely to happen. But BitTorrent is just another Internet aplication as far as any service provider should be concerned.
    Only on topic of Cablevision AKA OptimumOnline. I have OptimumOnline cable broadband & I download (a guesstimate) 50GB average a month for the past year and the 2 years before that I probably downloaded 20GB a month. I have never had a problem with their tech support or with their terms of service in regards of my bandwidth usage.

  8. #8
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    Thanks for the answers guys. Believe it or not, I have trouble just finding a dialup ISP here that lets you download as much as possible. They all say "Unlimited Downloads!!!!" etc but eventually I get kicked off or warned about abusing the fair use policy (or whatever they call it). I put this down to living in a remote area (no broadband available here) but rest assured, I migrated away from those ISPs. I am now with a small local ISP who have no qualms about me downloading stuff 24/7 but I pay quite a bit for this. ($44/month AU).

    Anyways, I was wondering about something else concerning the GPL, and I can't really understand the legal speak of the GPL FAQ, so here goes and thank you if you can help. I occasionally make wallpapers and when I make one good enough, I would like to release it on kde-look.org. I notice that most of the wallpapers there are licensed as GPL, and I realise (I think) that as long as the materials I've used are GPL or my own creation, I can release that as GPL, and then others can modify my creation and release it as GPL, and so on. (Fill me in if I'm wrong on any of this, please!)

    So, is everything in KDE and Kanotix/Knoppix GPL? I found this page with KDE clip-art and I'm assuming it's quite okay for me to use it in a GPL situation but I'd like to make sure. Also, in the GPL FAQ it mentioned stuff about making the source code available etc. How does this relate to a graphic environment of making wallpapers? Do I have to keep the original Gimp file or something? Or is this just not an issue when it comes to things that aren't programs?

    I also saw a wallpaper file on kde-look.org that was perfect except that one tiny portion of it needed to be green. It would take 20 seconds to fix and it would look a lot better. Now, in a GPL sense, I gather that I can just change it to green, and release it as my own, but to me that seems quite disrespectful of the guy who put it all together in the first place. Wouldn't he get offended that I spent only 20 seconds on it and released it as my own? I would of course put a link to his original creation in the description of my modified version, so I expect that would be fine, but still, it seems weird to me. I guess I have to stretch my brain around this to understand this new way of thinking (new to me at least).

    One final thing: I think the GPL thing needs a "human-readable summary" like this Creative Commons thing has. Maybe it does already and I missed it. Hope my questions and worries make sense to someone. (edit: I should add that the Creative Commons link I gave has nothing to do with wallpaper as such, it's in regards to some music I downloaded, I was referring to the simplified language used, and then giving an option to read the whole thing).

    (second edit: I am making great progress in the music department - I got ReBorn working and some other sound apps, hooray! Okay, I'll shut up now).

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