How not to play with "Open" license.

So the iMagic people can license their code with that EULA, but they cannot relicense someone else's with it. If they decide to license their code with it, they may not be able to distribute it with GPL code.

They are distributing it with GPL code, as are all the other proprietary distros (think Xandros, Turbolinux, et al). So far as I understand the GPL there is nothing stopping them from doing this. The license simply doesn't apply to any GPL code in their distro. It applies to any proprietary code they include, of course, which is packaged together with GPL code.

Yes, but their EULA doesn't mention the GPL, or that the vast majority of the code isn't under those restrictions. I don't know what their code is, or how the laws work exactly, but if they have modified, or added code in certain ways, they have to release it under the GPL. They are welcome to add proprietary bits to their linux, and charge what ever they want for it. But they cannot, as implied by their EULA, change the license to code they do not own, and if there code falls under the restrictions in the GPL, they cannot distribute it under another license.

Shouldn't such an EULA state something like, "Your use of iMagic's proprietary code..." which applies to their product?

Not mentioning that most of what they're selling is GPL seems silly, unless they're trying to mislead.

Maybe just letting them know would suffice.

Thanks Bob, that is what I was trying to say.

I read through their EULA, and it makes heavy mention of the GPL and other licenses, including having a copy of the GPL text. It seems to be no different than any other commercial Linux Distributors License (Mandriva, Red Hat, Linspire, Xandros). Personally I think this is a storm in a teacup, and a beat up.

I agree with ta on this one. There is nothing wrong with their license AFAICT. I just don't want to accept it so I won't use their distro.

Naturally they can't override the GPL, but what's the point in extracting the GPLed code, you'd be better off to simply use Ubuntu or Debian as your source. Personally I wish them good luck, I hope for their sake they have something, those scripts they refer to, perhaps, that makes it worthwhile purchasing separate copies for each computer it's installed on to.

It's clear that iMagicOS can write their proprietary license. It doesn't override the GPL and you can extract the GPL code from their OS. You can't reproduce or use anything they have added which is proprietary code.

iMagicOS offered to send me a DVD sometime back if I'd write a review. I politely declined because of their license. I can't imagine anything that they do would make it so much better than Ubuntu to justify the price. I'm sure they'll find a few relatively ignorant people (ignorant when it comes to Linux, anyway) to sell it to. Looking at their website I see little if anything to recommend this distro over any other.