"Michael Poole" <mdpoole@troilus.org> wrote in message [🔎] 87zmo81lt3.fsf@localhost.localdomain">news:[🔎] 87zmo81lt3.fsf@localhost.localdomain...
Kieran Lloyd writes:Dear Sirs, I am considering selling some home made PC's on Ebay, the thing is I want to sell these pre-installed with Debian Linux. Would Debian have any argument with this? I will obviously be advertising that the Pc's have Debian installed however I will not be charging for it I would only be charging a mark up on my hardware. Please advise if this would be acceptable.It seems odd to me that no one has yet pointed out the congruences between this request and that of "Nexenta". For example, GRUB and Linux are both licensed under the GPL. Both would be included with these retail systems and would be written to locate and call functions within the BIOS; that is, GRUB and Linux would be dynamically linked against the (presumably non-free) BIOS.
The difference is that Debian does not distribute the BIOS. The exception in the GPL says this:
However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
This would prevent the CDDL'ed kernel from being a problem, except that the kernel would be distributed with the programs when we ship CDs.
The BIOS is most certainly part of the "operating system" in which the bootloaders run. We do not distribute the BIOS. Therefore the above clause does most certainly resolve the issue.