[Freegis-list] Free Gis CDROM

[Bernhard Reiter]

On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 10:51:48AM +0000, Sajith VK wrote:
> > I haven't tested all of those in detail,
> > but the problems I mentioned will exist with some of them:
> > 	- contains some non-free software

> If we use morphix the only non-free software is an nvdia driver.
> We can remove this from the CD we distribute. Also morphix team
> plans to remove them, so thatmorphix will be 100% free

This problem is that there are doubts 
whether the morphix teams has the experience to do this.

Their FAQ shows that they don't know that 
the GNU GPL is only one Free Software license 
and that any GNU/Linux system
will contain software not licensed under the GNU GPL.

http://morphix.sourceforge.net/modules/xoopsfaq/index.php?cat_id=1#q27

	Is there non-free software in Morphix?

	I'm pragmatic on using non-free software,

	not all software inside Morphix is GPLed. 

	So, people not using nvidia or the game distro do have a
	fully GPL-compliant distribution

	
> > 	- companies cannot base derived CD on them, 
> > 	  because it is not easy to get nice source CDs.
> We need to address this. As knoppix and morphix are based on debian
> creating a source CD will be very easy

The Debian package part is relatively easy.
The kernel, configuration scripts and cloop part might not
with Knoppix.

> > 	- harddisk installation might be a pain if derived from knoppix
> Morphix solves this issue.

I guess I really have to try morphix and see if they improved
the situation.

> > 	- only of limited use to beginners because data,
> > 	  procedures and documentation is not tightly integrated.
> We need to address this.

Yes. 
As Markus points out, we might choose a completely different,
but interesting data set. It certainly makes a lot of sense
to use data which is close to the region (at least from the continent).

> > I guess some of those efforts should be merged
> > and the Free Software community should separate the task
> > to create a "Freie Software Knoppix" on top of Knoppix 
> > from creating special topic CD based on this.

> I dont know what are the non-free softwares present in knoppix.

As documented on 
http://intevation.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs-misc.cgi/%2Acheckout%2A/freie_software_knoppix/knoppixAddFreedom.html?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/html
On our last research we found the following packages on Knoppix 3.2
to be from Debian non-free:  lha unarj gimp1.2-nonfree 3270-common
x3270 acroread giflib-bin giflib3g unp
In addition we removed knx-flashplugin and Java in /usr/lib/j2se.

> But morphix team says, nvidia driver is the only non-free software
> present in it. 

Hopefully they are correct, their FAQ is not as shown above.

Regards,
	Bernhard

-- 
Professional Service around Free Software                (intevation.net)  

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