Best Buy sells Ubuntu for 20-bucks...wha???

[quote name='plasticbathmonki']Okay, I won't flame BB for this one, rather I'll reserve my judgment for this ValueSoft company that's putting it out. I thought that this was a book or something at first, but it looks like it's just a disk.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage...buntu&lp=1&type=product&cp=1&id=1211587312374

Apparently, this company sells a copy of Open Office for $20....:lol:[/QUOTE]

That's actually not that common, a lot of companies will sell linux on disk to cover the cost of cd, storeage, etc. Downloading is free though.

Selling open office though? As horrible as they program is they should pay people to use it.
 
this is pretty normal. my dad used to buy cds from a company called walnut creek(i think) which were just linux distros burned to disk. It's perfectly legal to sell as long as they include the source code.
 
Regardless of if it's legal, it's a principle thing to me. I seriously doubt alot of these third party companies offer anything in terms of support or troubleshooting. That means they are basically profiting off the work of someone else. Now I'm as capitalistic as they come, but there is a line, ya know?

Now if they add to Ubuntu and offer support, then we have a different story.
 
[quote name='lbradeen']this is pretty normal. my dad used to buy cds from a company called walnut creek(i think) which were just linux distros burned to disk. It's perfectly legal to sell as long as they include the source code.[/QUOTE]

Wow. The fact that you don't know who Walnut Creek is makes me feel very old and very sad. Please tell me that at one point in your life, you downloaded something, anything, Doom-related from cdrom.com and I will feel better.
 
Heh, I guess ValuSoft decided to move from publishing abysmal PC shovelware games to selling free software through their distribution channels.

There's a topic over at the official Ubuntu forums about this. There is also some blog article that shows what's in the box:
http://princessleia.com/journal/?p=1262

It looks like it is a legit operation they're running, as pointed out on the Ubuntu forums, the GPL usually allows for some commercial resale, and the back of the box has the Canonical re-distributor approval seal.

Can't say I enjoy the idea, though the back of the box offers some laughs.
 
[quote name='Vinny']I thought it was illegal to sell this kind of free software?[/QUOTE]
Absolutely not. The GPL explicitly permits it, in fact. As long as the source code (or a promise to provide it free upon request) goes along with the binaries you can transfer it to others for whatever compensation you can negotiate. Of course, you can't restrict how they can redistribute the GPL licensed portions, so it's not the best business model to simply reproduce the free ISOs and sell them. Many distributions offer value added packages.
 
[quote name='Loomy']Isn't Ubuntu licensed under the creative commons license?[/quote]
It's a Linux distro so it's good ol' Gnu GPL version 2. BTW, GPL and CC license are actually incompatible. Also when anyone states Linux is "free software" they are actually referring to this definition.

I'm not a GPL expert but the source code does not have to be directly on the disk as long the end-user is at least notified of where to find it.
 
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