RedHat is dropping their retail version

I was looking at http://www.osnews.com/ and I saw this story, though I'd show everyone in case you didn't see it.

http://www.linuxandmain.com/modules....rticle&sid=364

I never bought RedHat in a store or intended to so it doesn't really effect me...

its is kind of odd they do are doing that but then again when every i was in a store that sold linux redhat was always the most expensive and you can jst download it for free so y would you pay for it. but i dont know.

People have fast connections nowerdays so i dought many people want to buy it when you can download it in a few hours now not days.

Lets just hope they don't go "Napster" on us and force us to pay to download their software. Red Hat would go under in less than a week!

Mike

well i dont think that would even be legal they would have to have a free version out there that we could use.

From what I understand of the GPL the company doesn't actually have to have a free version available, they just have to release the source code for everything. So, in a way there always would be a free version, you'd just have to compileit yourself.

edit: I looked at the actually GPL and in one line it states "Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for this service if you wish)" so RedHat could legally charge for all their software, as long as they allow users to get the source code. That's the way I interpreted the GPL anyway...

yes and please no offense to anybody.. but many linux users could not do that, considering linux has just recently grown in popularity. So they would be stuck with buying it or using a harder distrobution.

mike

yeah i know what you mean i dont think i wouldnt know how to compile it but i really should learn how. maybe i will get around to learning it one of these days

Under GPL, "free" doesn't imply that it comes without a cost to the user (although most open-source products can be obtained as such).

Instead, it refers to the "freedom" of being able to access the source code "freely".