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Re: [LUG] Fw: [freecycletruro] offered: desktop computer

 

It's a digital world, things are always confusing. I've always liked the idea that in the real world you couldn't bang two rocks together and have the slimmest chance of making a Ferrari by doing that, but in the digital world if you randomly generate bytes (the equivalent of banging rocks together) you actually have a reasonable chance of ending up with a piece of music or a movie... it'll just take a while. If you do bang some rocks together and make a Ferrari in the real world that's fine, you get to keep it but in the digital world banging rocks together and reaching some end goal is actually a breach of copyright laws.

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 7:58 PM, Paul Sutton <zleap@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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Terry Hill wrote:
>> That's good.  There's a guy on the Torbay Freecycle who often advertises
>> PCs, funnily enough they seem to come with Windows XP and Office 2003.
>>  Either he's loaded and giving away legal copies he's paid for out of his
>> own pocket or he's doing something naughty.
>>
>> I haven't yet e-mailed him to suggest he gives out PCs with at least
>> OpenOffice.org, but I must admit I am tempted.
>>
>> I mean, what he is doing in general (i.e. rebuilding PCs and giving them
>> away to people who could make use of them) is great, but if he's giving away
>> pirated copies with them then he is leaving himself at risk and possibly
>> others who get the PCs with dodgy software on them.

>
> Perhaps the PC's he advertises came with the software in the first
> place.  Personally I have two licenses for XP, one for office 2003 and
> a full license for a Dreamweaver suite that I'm not using, and I gave
> away two licenses for XP last year.  Once I get around to reinstalling
> my compaq lappy, I'll have another spare license.  As far as I
> understand it, if you've got the label then you've got the license
> (although correct me if I need it, I've never attempted to keep up
> with the mechinations at Richmond).
>

This would make an excellent talk at an event aimed at non linux users
with regard to advocacy of free software,  or give examples of why we
prefer the free software licensing idea,  rather than the rather complex
and for ever changing world of commercial software.

perhaps we can collate some examples of where things get really
confusing.  Not just with MS licensing but in general,

Paul



- --
Paul Sutton
www.zleap.net

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