17 Nov
2003
17 Nov
'03
10:05 a.m.
* macbiesz wrote:
A couple years ago, Sun released Solaris 8 source for
free. The
whole system is full of SVisms, and AFAIK, the source remains free.
I think it depends what you mean by `free'. I forget the details but
though I'm sure you could fetch it, look at it, rebuild it & maybe
make changes which you did not redistribute, you almost certainly
could not, say, redistribute it, or take material from it and
redistribute that. You may also have needed to be a Solaris licensee
as well (not that this costs much or, often, anything).
So it really is one of these `definition of free' things - if you
define `free' as `not costing anything' then yes, it was/is free, but
if you define it in some sense that involves freedom to redistribute
or something like that then it wasn't free. I doubt
free-software-cult followers would have called it free, put it that
way!
Anyway, this is probably off-topic by now
--tim