At Mon, 5 Jan 2009 11:02:31 -0500,
Darrell Eifert <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Actually, I meant 'free' in both senses, but mostly in the sense of
> 'free of charge'.

Thanks for the clarification. In that case I have to agree with Karen.
Free (as in beer) software tends to be a property that results from
the principles of free (as in speech) software, but it is not an goal
in itself of most free/open source software developers.

> I hate to be blunt, but I think it's pretty safe to say that Ubuntu,
> Koha, GIMP, OpenOffice, Joomla and even the option of Linux itself
> would never exist or have gained traction and a developer base if
> these products were not freely available.

Probably - but they certainly never would have gained a developer base
if they were not free in the sense of having the source code
available, and allowing modifications. Freedom is more important to
community building than giving the software away without cost.

> Groovix and Userful are selling proprietary public-use computer
> management packages at a higher cost than their XP equivalents. If
> an open source LTSP solution were available under Linux (as in the
> Edubuntu package for schools) I would be much happier about
> recommending Linux as a solution for public-use computers in small
> to medium-sized independent public libraries.
>
> Again, I would invite those interested in providing help on this
> project to look at the feature list of 'Time Limit Manager' from
> Fortres -- that's what I want in an LTSP package. (As an analogy,
> remember that Koha was once just an idea floating around in some
> idealistic New Zealander's head.)
>
> http://www.fortresgrand.com/products/tlm/tlm.htm

Groovix claims to be GPLed, though they do not make it easy to get the
software. Here is some info:

<http://wiki.groovix.org/index.php?title=GroovixSoftwareInstaller>

best, Erik