Legal issue

I have no idea which clause in the license triggered your question. Send an email to Warren at to get an answer.

Regards, Ko

Ko Bros

the part that says Mepis can be used NON-COMMERCIALLY...

Happy Easter if you observe it!

frad, this sounds like a "hypothetical legal question". I'm not a lawyer, and I'm in no position to defend, clarify, expand, summarize, describe, explain, or even understand the answer to your question (sound lawyerly enough?)

But like a lot of "hypothetical questions", you are being a bit vague. Exactly which license and clause are you referring to?

If you have a serious desire to know the answer as opposed to many different answers then I would do as Ko suggests and ask a very specific question to Warren. And then, if both of you agree, would you please post the results (if any) to that question?

Now, here's my opinion. There are a lot of people out there who have written lots of articles for many magazines on, about, and using Linux of various distributions. I am certain that these people get paid. I do not believe that they are "breaking" any license.

Oh, one more thing. If/when you get a response, and you like what you see, please give Mepis a try on your system and buy a copy of it to pay Warren for his hard work

Jon

In /dev/null, no one can hear you type...

IANAL, but my guess would go this way: if you use MEPIS commercially you need to purchase the CD or the download, if you use it at home you don't have to you can just download copy and use it. For home work is not that clear, I think that if you use you machine mainly for work (even if you are at home) I would say buy the CD or the download.

I hope somebody from MEPIS will correct me if I'm wrong.

--
Check out MEPIS Wiki: www.mepis.org/docs

I think this is an important issue that Warren should address here.

Like a lot of people, I use my home computer for both personal stuff and for stuff related to my job. If using MEPIS for work-related things violates the license, that could make my employer and me vulnerable to lawsuits or possibly criminal prosecution.

I didn't buy the MEPIS CD, but I have an active "gold" subscription at mepis.org. It's not clear to me how that affects licensing though.

What is missing is the context and exact license.

Would you please post a link to the specific license, or C&P the text of same, here?


If nothing else, serving as a dire warning to others is not a bad thing to be.

To Frad: That is not a commercial activity.

To Dave_L: That is not a commercial activity. And besides you did pay for it. If you use it a lot for work, it may be a tax deductable expense.

A commercial activity is an organized ongoing activity conducted for profit, usually fulltime. A good rule of thumb is that if your local jurisdiction requires that the activity have a business license, and the activity is not recognized as not-for-profit, then it is probably a commercial activity.

If your activity requires that you have a separate taxable legal entity like a corporation or a partnership then it is definitely a commercial activity.

If you do something on an irregular basis that generates some income, that is not a commercial activity. A freelance writer is generally not considered to be engaged in a commercial activity. If your employer expects you to work at home parttime using your own computer, that is not a commercial activity.

If your employer provides you with a computer and installs MEPIS on it and expects you to use MEPIS, that is a part of their commercial activity and shame on your employer if they do not pay for MEPIS.

If you install MEPIS on computers and sell them to others, that is a commercial activity. If you install MEPIS on a friend's computer, and afterward they take you out for a beer, that is not a commercial activity.

If you are not engaged in a commercial activity, you have my blessing to use MEPIS free of charge. Paying for it by buying a CD or subscription or making a donation to MEPIS would help me pay my bills, but that is not required.

If you are engaged in a commercial activity that generates a livelyhood for you and/or others, and you use MEPIS in that activity, then you are asked to pay for MEPIS by buying a CD or subscription, etc. But again as a practical matter, whether you do so or not is between you and your conscience. I don't have the time, energy, interest, or money to go around suing secret commercial users of MEPIS.

If your employer is using MEPIS at the office but is too cheap to buy MEPIS CDs, then they don't deserve to be in business, and they probably don't treat their employees very well either, but that's their karma.

The license language exits primarily to communicate that MEPIS has value. People should acknowledge that value by paying for MEPIS. If you can't afford to support MEPIS, you aren't expected to. If you can afford to, then you should.

In a free market economy, people vote with their "dollars." If you want MEPIS to exist, then vote for MEPIS by paying for it. If you don't want MEPIS to exist, then vote for that by not paying for it. But if you use MEPIS and don't pay for it, and yet you can afford to pay for it, then shame on you.

Warren's post inspires me to send off some $--tonight!--to support Mepis. (Well, maybe in the morning...)

At the moment, I have no *professional* stake in any particular operating system, so I'd been ignoring this thread. But it's made me consider the value that Mepis has had for me over the last couple of years: It was Mepis that allowed me to transition fairly painlessly from Windows to Linux. And the value of this--the intellectual stimulation, the engagement with a community of extraordinary people, the altruism of the overall open-source endeavor--is difficult to put into words but is nonetheless very real.

As Warren says, it's dollars that show the appreciation.

--Malanrich

Warren: Thanks for the explanation.

The issue has become clearer to me now. I am a school teacher and need to use my private computer to prepare my lessons. I normally do it using Star Office or Open Office on (I guess I should blush now) WindowsXP or Open Office on SAM/PCLinuxOS.

I was considering installing Mepis about a week ago but having read the license (or a part of it) I decided not to install Mepis and went for SAM/PCLOS instead.

Now my concerns have been clarified (well, perhaps 99% of them). I DO BELIEVE in showing appreciation with money - we all do whether we agree with it or not!