Interview with Warren Woodford - Founder of Mepis

Quoting:Some people call me a whiner about the GPL, while from my point of view they are the whiners. The GPL deserves to be scrutinized closely and to be debated, as does any legal document that restricts people’s rights. Calling a person a whiner because they care enough to challenge, question, or state positions about something is itself whining.

Someone makes software freely available, he tries to use their work to feed himself, and then they're whining when they ask that he respects their license. This is kind of like a homeless person complaining at the soup kitchen because the bread isn't fresh.

Bigg --

Especially when you consider that the bread is often fresh..

Muffin stubs -- that's another matter.

Odd your propensity for jumping on the down and out. Sounds more like a wealthy individual that is not used to having to foot the bill.

Warren is so abused. All that free/libre code to use, such a burden.

I gave him $5 once. Things went downhill from there...

I should add one qualification to my criticism. Mepis has become more of a community distribution, so my criticism is confined to Warren, not Mepis.

AFAICT, he is now complying with the GPL........

> AFAICT, he is now complying with the GPL........

AFAIK, that is correct. :)

Zenwalk also now seems to be complying.

These are good things.

I'll always have a soft spot for Mepis, since I live less than 50 miles from Morgantown (and went to college there).

My mother lives in Beckley, so I have a soft spot for Mepis also. It was the first introduction to a Linux that "just worked" and it worked beautifully.

Very nice about Zenwalk, it's a wonderful distro that runs great on older hardware (and on newer hardware, too).