St George [Australian bank] endorses licensing open source software

This guy has been brainwashed by the BSA. Most of the software he is referring to is "licensed" under the GPL (General Public License) and doesn't allow for sub-licensing. Those of us who write software and place it under the GPL do so to give you the right to install it on whatever and however many machines you want and not to feel guilty about doing so. We are a giving people. Even better, we give you the source code to view and modify if you so choose. Maybe you'll be nice enough to make the software better and let us in on enhancements. That's the pay we hope for, Freedom.

Now, there is nothing wrong with having a support contract in which you pay someone to support the software you use but this is a support contract, not a software license. Please do not confuse the two. Now, for that $5 million/yr in M$ licensing you could probably hire at least 5 really good people (I would be willing to be one of the 5) that could actually be productive 24x7 and do a far better job than that phone support contract will ever do for you. You don't have to be so dependent on everyone else, it's not against the law or immoral.

Seriously, give me a call. This message was edited Jun 25, 2004 12:27 AM

I read this article, and thought 'oh it is a positive about a bank converting to Linux', and it turns out to be another BS piece by the BSA. The BSA have nothing to do with F/OSS or any other free and open type software. They are funded by proprietary companies, and make their business _exclusively_ from proprietary software. F/OSS is a direct attack on their business model so they have to FUD to try and survive. This is FUD from a group who make up figures on software use, by basing them in incorrect assumptions, and possible lies.