[thelist] AOL wants to buy RH Linux??

martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com
Mon Jan 21 04:14:13 CST 2002


Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

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To:   thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject:  RE: [thelist] AOL wants to buy RH Linux??

>So it requires a lot of sophistication to install. So what?

>Does that mean that AOL wouldn't change it so it suited
>their exact defaults if they wanted to, and changed the
>code so that it only supported their programs?

Yup - their own installation controller which read all the settings
for peripherals (printers & modems mostly). Look at the OS X installer -
it really is fire and forget.

>And they'd have to distribute the code for it.

Would they? Changes to the core operating system sure, but AFAIK
it's perfectly OK to have a proprietory application running on a GPL
system as long as it doesn't modify the OS or pinch bits of code for
its own running (as opposed to simply hooking into the APIs)

And the larger part of an installer would run on Windows anyway...
(setting up a dual boot with default to boot to Linux, then kicking off
the install with the right settings so no user input required).

Cheers
Martin


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