From: entropy@ee.WPI.EDU (Lawrence C. Foard)
Subject: Linux distribution
Reply-To: entropy@ee.WPI.EDU (Lawrence C. Foard)
Date: Wed, 25 Mar 1992 20:01:28 GMT


I personally have no problem with people profiting from distribution of free
software as long as it is done honestly (this is what the GPL tries to
insure). Unfortunitly not everyone has net access and you can't expect
people to put out the effort to mail out thousands of copies of Linux
without earning something for it.

I do some consulting work in addition to my part time job at WPI. So far
I've had to do it all in DOS (YUCK!!!), the main reason is that its hard to
convince a customer to shell out $1000 for Sys V to run a mailing list.
Fortunitly I have access to Linux from the net, but there are many people
who could make use of Linux who don't have this good fortune. Please don't
pretend Linux is just a toy, once it has network and X support it will be
the best PC operating system available. Lets make sure people can use it
instead of just a small cult of those fortunite enough to have ftp access.
Some day you will be thankful that you can write in a real OS rather than a
microsoft excretion.

While not distributers arn't legally obligated to do so I think it is only
fair that some of the profits earned from distributing linux go back into
improving it.