Corel took a baby step toward creating a consumer version of Linux on Tuesday by releasing a beta of Corel Linux to a limited group of developers. The move was met by instant protest from open source advocates opposed to its licensing restrictions.
Linux developers complained that Corel's beta testing agreement for the operating system violated a fundamental principle of the open source movement: Thou shalt freely distribute the code.
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"I wrote some of the software," said Bruce Perens, one of the founders of the open source initiative. Perens wrote software for the Debian software project, an open source project he lead for two and a half years that he said was one of the open source components of Corel Linux.
"I put a license on it that said, 'You can't change the terms of the license,' and that beta testing agreement definitely changes the terms," Perens said.
One of the sacred rules of open source software -- which Perens said Corel is also obligated to follow -- is that the code must be released under an unrestricted license, allowing it to be openly distributed and modified as other developers see fit.
But the Corel Linux beta testing agreement stipulates that a "user may not reproduce and distribute copies of the products to any other person."
Perens and others immediately took exception to the requirement, discussing its cause and ramifications at the Linux community's premiere Web gathering place, Slashdot.
Slashdot contributors protested that Corel's terms violated several sections of the GNU Public License (GPL), one of a number of popular open source licenses.
The outraged reaction was merely a misunderstanding, said a Corel spokeswoman, a possibility raised by some participants in the Slashdot discussion.
"We haven't really released a beta," said Corel's Judith O'Brien, communications manager for Linux. "Under the GPL license, once you've made the software widely available, you have to [allow open distribution of] the source code, but in effect all we've done is bring in a few third-party testers."
