Quote:
Originally Posted by jocampo
Well, a licensed version, yes ...  ... for instance, Red Hat, but main different is support. Vendor are actually selling you the on going support or any kernel tweak that you need for a software, like Oracle, for example. It's the same for Ubuntu and Canonical. |
Okay another common misconception*
. open source software is not public domain it is released under a license, GPL(Gnu Public License). So when I said licenced software I was refering to GPL not a distrobution ("Red Hat") in your example.
Here is a quote form the WIKI page,
Quote:
Legal aspects
Licensing terms
Initially, Torvalds released Linux under a license which forbade any commercial use. This was soon changed to the GNU General Public License (GPL), as of version 0.12. This license allows distribution and sale of possibly modified and unmodified versions of Linux but requires that all those copies be released under the same license and be accompanied by the complete corresponding source code.
Torvalds has described licensing Linux under the GPL as the "best thing I ever did."[22]
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It's a good read if your interested here is the
link to the main page. And a link to the legal (
link)
*BTW When I first got into Linux/Open source over a decade ago I also had the same misconceptions, as do most people.