PUBLISHED: December 20, 2008
Believe it or not - not all Linux distributions are free. Actually, most outsiders of the community misinterpret the term 'free' and expect that to mean they do not have to pay anything. Not all distribution licenses are written in this manner. Instead, free means 'freedom' and not 'no cost.' This always comes as a surprise to some people. Tom callaway explains this challenge in a professional manner in his rant about licenses. He's correct that few distributions have done a clean sweep of their products to make sure there are not any hidden gotchas. Is this really the responsibility of the user? When there are so many releases of distributions, maybe the first step is to make sure the product is actually free. What do you think?
