Sunday, November 25th 2007
ASUS EeePC Violates GPL Say Linux Community
Members of the Linux community have complained that the hot new sub-notebook from ASUS, the eeePC, may have violated the spirit of the Linux General Public License (GPL). Some Linux advocates claim the EeePC has not included required source code with the installed Xandros Linux distribution and does not easily enable users to install another distribution. However, there are indications that EeePC fans probably don't care. The ASUS EeePC has been hailed widely as a breakthrough product that could widely integrate Linux in the consumer computing marketspace. However, some Linux purists are upset that the EeePC uses Xandros, a Debian-based distribution which charges license fees and has a similar patent protection agreement with Microsoft to the one signed 12 months ago by Novell. The full story plus all the complaints can be found here.
Source:
iTWire
9 Comments on ASUS EeePC Violates GPL Say Linux Community
i always thought linux was stupid....
The GPL has been successfully upheld in Germany, in particular -- Skype was recently punished there for trying to sell a VOIP phone without including source code.
Linux is open source, Asus uses a Linux O/S with all the work coded by the community for free, some corporation then sells a laptop with the O/S pre-installed for profit without paying a dime!, at the very least it should release all newly written source code back into the community that produced the damn thing that took many years without profit!
Of course people are so used to stealing they just don't care any more.