Re: [OSS] Re: Fwd: Second OSS Conference - Follow Up

I was talking about VietKey's keyboard driver, not about their
[GNU/]Linux distro.

That was clear in the previous message; that keyboard driver is what I
am talking about. It is not a real contribution to our community,
because it isn't free.

Now they are obviously applying again a dual-mode: On one of their websites
they are still offering it for pay, on another website, they are offering
free download.

For pay or gratis, either way the program is not free software. If
there is no chance of convincing him to make it free, the thing to do
is write a free replacement for it. If we did that for all of Unix,
someone in Vietnam can do it for a keyboard driver.

Perhaps this project could be a way of educating Vietnamese computer
users about the issue of freedom.

And, to host the sources only on a website is against the GPL.

That is correct; under the GPL, if they provide binaries on CD-ROM,
they have to provide source code that way too. Since there isn't
copyright enforcement in Vietnam, we cannot take legal action to
enforce the GPL. It would have to be done by community pressure.

If you take your idea of morality from copyright law, you might think
of this GPL violation as a wrong done to the owners of the GPL-covered
programs. In the free software movement, we have a different view.
We see this as mistreatment of all the users in the community. If you
spread this viewpoint in Vietnam, eventually the community may put
pressure on this company to treat the community better.

Please don't call it a "Linux distro"; that's not fair to the system's
first and principal developers, the GNU Project. See
http://www.gnu.org/gnu/gnu-linux-faq.html.

To facilitate co-ordination regarding the introduction of OSS SW in Vietnam

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