Originally posted by: drag
Yea, you really gotta love someone that doesn't respect the work and wishes of others. :/
Plus potentially opens up you and your company to major lawsuites. What Gentoo is essentially doing is handing off the legal responsability for their own actions off onto the end user, which is a bad thing. Personally I think that software patents are fundamentally flawed and it's perfectly ok to disregard them entirely, but you have to be aware of the legal consiquences of having a attitude like that.
Most people don't understand the legal ramifications of, say, using Gentoo as a streaming media server for a service. Something like, say, a college campus mp3 radio station.
Something like that will easily get your employers sued and you fired.
So Linux distributions realy have a legal responsability to their _end_users_, not to do anything that will potentially screw them over.
When I use Debian or Fedora Core, I know those people have done licensing audits and take it seriously. I may not agree with all their decisions, but I appreciate the hard work they do. I know that with those I can take them and modify it. I can use it for any purpose. Build streaming servers with the software they provide. Bundle it with hardware. Use it in embedded systems. Sell copies of cdroms on Ebay. Sell PCs to people. Use it for anything and everything I want.
I don't have to consult lawyers and do the licensing audits myself. I know that it's all Free software and worst case is that I'd have to deal with the requirements of the GPL license.
With Gentoo or other similar things, I don't know that. I can't trust it and I need to be paraniod about what software I use in it.
Ignoring the law is not a good way to deal with the law. If you don't beleive me, go and visit any county courthouse or correctional facility and you can find usually several hundred people figuring that out the hard way. Of course with software the penalties are financial, but that can be worse sometimes.