According to Distrowatch an evaluation edition of the Lycoris Desktop/LX 1.4 has been released. The edition only contains GPL components and the license prevents its use after the initial 45-day evaluation period. Get more information via their press release here and their sneak peak page. Update: 100 Lycoris screenshots.
Evaluation copy of Lycoris available
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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How can the liscense on something that contains only GPL elements expire after 45 days? I was under the impression that the GPL didn’t allow extra restrictions to be placed on it, and that the only thing that it dealt with at all was redistribution.
I agree – they can license their own bit of code for 45 days only, but the GPL stuff you can keep using as long as you want. So that’d be the kernel, the filesystem, the X server, the window manager…. there’s not a lot that’s only got 45 days in it is there?
electronic agreements that you probably have to do when you download or install the OS.
also, sometimes the structure of the OS is copyrighted regardless of the packages installed.
furthermore….. who wants a linux like this anyway?
Or like Red Hat does, restrict the OS use due to the trademark, logo and other media copyrights present in the installation.
Howdy all
the structure of the OS is copyrighted regardless of the packages installed.
Ummmmmmmmm how can you copyright a file structure??
I`d agree with trademarks etc but how does putting trademarks into GPL code sit as far as distribution go?
I mean if it was linked code it has to be GPL or simmilar (well lets just be kinda vague here i don`t want 2 pages of amendments)
Anyone?
The 45 day license has been there in other updates, but you can use the evaluation version for more than 45 days without the os shutting down. I have not heard of or read about any changes to that policy.
Ummmmmmmmm how can you copyright a file structure??
The answer is you cannot. Such a thing would need a patent.
Most likely Lycoris has included artwork which is not under the GPL copyright with the GPL OS code. By having their trademark and copyrights on images they can then make a legal 45 day evaluation version. However if you where to remove those images and any trademarks and replace them with free versions you could create a “free” version of Lycoris that could be legally used past the 45 days. But I think that one of their main contributions to make their distro unique is that artwork.
The other things that they offer that make it unique are their special packs and connection to their download service.
Some may say you can do all this for free with some method or another but the point with Lycoris is that they do all the hard work for you and that is their value add (not to mention their pretty artwork).
I’d imagine the software has some kind of timelock function which is perfectly legal even under the GPL as long as they distribute the source for the timelock function as well. This may at first glance seem kind of silly but it will stop quite a few people of using Lycoris for ‘free.’ – simply because it would probably take a good amount of work to remove said timelock function and recompile.
If this is not how they are doing it but are adding legal policy onto the release, then it is probably a violation of the GPL. Either way it will prevent lots of people from even wanting to use it, demo or not. Luckily for the most part the rest of the Linux distribution world has moved past these poor attempts at profit in exchange for freedom of use and distribution. They can make money other ways, just ask Redhat. I’m not a fan of Linux concepts or even software quality but you can’t argue against the distribution concept. You can not beat free as in cost and free as in legal restrictions. They go hand in hand to provide a platform of choice not lock in of how you should use someone else’s work. There are ways to extend on the distribution success of Linux and GNU software, but until those are realized, GNU/Linux will continue it’s takeover of the computer industry. No OS, proprietary (unix, windows, skyos) or not, stands a chance in the way of superiorly distributed software. Even if it initially/eventually functions better. Once Linux makes its way fully onto the consumer PC distribution channels, the tables will quickly turn.
The announcement at distrowatch.com warns people about ordering this product from Lycoris.
I ordered and paid for this product back in July when they started taking orders and, now in November, I have still to receive what I paid for. Emails to them about my order have elicited zero response.
Just be aware that this company’s “customer service” may not be what you would hope for after giving them your hard-earned cash.
>>Just be aware that this company’s “customer service” may not be what you would hope for after giving them your hard-earned cash.
Yea, one’s support is truely only the amount of days they say it is when you buy it – period. They have a good community site and in the past I even helped the company test things for it such as usb storage devices before they were so cheap and normal to see. When they kept dragging their feet on and on about upgrading to KDE3 I threw in the towel with that distro. And if one only wanted community support we’d be using one of the many many “free” distros.
There is no additional restrictions on GPL and other GPL like copyrights, thats not allowed, as some faitful Osnews readers have already pointed out
The licence is on Lycoris artwork etc, just like any other OS, these things can be restricted and have a limited copyright on them. if you wish to use the OS past the 45 days, you can simple remove the packages affected by the Lycoris licence.
Ordering has been a problem, yes, but measures have been made to fix this and to ensure it does not happen again. There has been an email address to find status’ on orders (orders@ ). Also myself and Joe are accepting direct communications to escalate missing orders and resolve them.
Forgot to say who I was
monkey
@pollycat
You Said: “The announcement at distrowatch.com warns people about ordering this product from Lycoris.
I ordered and paid for this product back in July when they started taking orders and, now in November, I have still to receive what I paid for. Emails to them about my order have elicited zero response.
Just be aware that this company’s “customer service” may not be what you would hope for after giving them your hard-earned cash.”
If you did some basic research on their website you would find Lycoris had this to say:
“…Lycoris’ commitment to customers doesn’t stop once we have announced a product,” said Joseph Cheek, CEO and Founder of Lycoris. “We discovered some serious bugs in Desktop/LX 1.4 at the last minute, and decided to halt shipping until we had resolved the bugs, rather than releasing a sub-standard product…”
Therefore I ask: Would you rather have Lycoris send you something immediately that works about 99% or would you rather wait a little longer for something that works 100%
Not all companies care to release something half fast, and then fix it over the next 3 years. Then promise the remainder will be fixed in the next release — hmmmm, *cough* *cough* Microsoft….
Why use a more restrictive version of Linux on the desktop, especially as more free, desktop oriented Linux distributions like Ubuntu and UserLinux are becoming available? Seems a tad bit silly to me.
If you want to commercialize a UNIX desktop, and make it more restrictive, it makes more sense to me to base it off of BSD like Apple has. The BSD license encourages that kind of thing.
Doesn’t make as much sense to attach strings like that to a GPL based operating environment.
@thesimplefix
If you did some basic research on their website you would find Lycoris had this to say:
“…Lycoris’ commitment to customers doesn’t stop once we have announced a product,” said Joseph Cheek, CEO and Founder of Lycoris. “We discovered some serious bugs in Desktop/LX 1.4 at the last minute, and decided to halt shipping until we had resolved the bugs, rather than releasing a sub-standard product…”
Then they should have notified any customers waiting for their purchase and asked them what they wanted to do, ie. Wait for the fixes or refund their money!
This sort of practice is complete bullshit!
because it’s one of the most polished Linux Distros out there.
the truth is you can do watever u want with THE GPL. period.
“because it’s one of the most polished Linux Distros out there.”
I’m sorry, but you’ll have to come up with a more cohesive argument than that to convince me. What exactly puts it above MEPIS, Ubuntu or Ark?
quoth Anonymous:
the truth is you can do watever u want with THE GPL. period.
The fundamental premise of the GPL is to prevent the restriction of freedom. Thus you cannot make derivative works based on the GPL that are more restrictive than the GPL. You may want to read up on how the GPL works before making a hasty statement like that.
You are most likely thinking of the BSD style license. The only restriction that exists with the BSD license is that you can’t claim to have written code that somebody else wrote. Anything else goes, including making proprietary derivative works. Heck, rumor has it that Microsoft had a fairly extensive amount of BSD code in Windows NT for a while, including parts of the BSD TCP/IP stack.
“You can not beat free as in cost and free as in legal restrictions.”
You are wrong. Linux is not free, as in cost. As any GPL project will state on its donation page, costs are incurred for development, servers, and more importantly, time.
Most of the time this costs are not passed to the user (you), because of a general feeling of good will is present in the community (and donations are often expected).
However, when users start expecting, or worse yet, demanding “free of cost, or bust”, the good feelings begin to get strained.
Joseph, like you have stated before, one of the fantastic things about Linux is freedom. That freedom includes the choice of a developer to be a little more active in requesting remuneration of costs.
Granted, Lycoris has not produced and developed every single byte that they sell in-house. But they are not charging for those things they didn’t do. The source for every GPL product they use is available from them (most likely at a modest shipping charge).
What they are charging for is their enhancements. Call them wallpapers, call them artwork, call them whatever you want.
You may call them useless decorations if you want, and you can even rant that equivalent “decorations” are available free of charge elsewhere.
I like to think of it as a whole package. I believe the final product is much more than just the sum of its parts. Sure, you may say you can come up with better wallpapers, icons, window decors, widgets, applications, etc. than they have.
But you *would* incur costs in doing so. You can give it away for free if you want, but you still incurred costs. (Say what you may, you at least incurred costs in your time. I don’t know about you, but for me, time is a very valuable resource).
After you do all that, I’m pretty sure your result won’t feel as cohesive and polished as the package that Lycoris offers me. Take it as a challenge if you want. I would love that you proved me wrong.
Honestly, I don’t think you would take up my challenge. I know you like Linux like the old-hats: pure. I know you personally don’t like Desktop distros, they don’t “fit” with you. You probably are more productive in a shell, and don’t even need GUIs in your Linux installs.
What Lycoris does is trying to build a whole package that fits with a certain type of people out there. It probably doesn’t “fit” them personally, and that makes the process more commendable.
They make it for someone else that probably doesn’t share their personal interests at all. And they do a terrific job.
They think it’s fair to charge for such work, and I agree. You are free to disagree if you want.
I will not complain for paying for such a product. Even if it’s just the packaging, or the “wrapping” of other existing GPL products, if you wanna see it like that.
Like you say, Linux is about freedom. You are free to make your own Linux package from scratch, or simply choose another distro.
And yes, you are free to criticize those who do not think like you.
But respecting other’s choices is much more appreciated, specially in such a community-driven culture such as this.
I don’t understand why they only include the GPL components. Surely an evaluation edition is meant to promote sales and Lycoris’ main selling points are all the proprietary extensions they provide. I suppose some of the proprietary bits must require royalty payments to third-parties and hence can’t be given away (even for evaluation). Shame.
I do need it.
I use it on my own laptop as my main distro and even if I consider myself a knowledgeable person (I support over 400 RedHat servers at work), I like Desktop/LX because of it’s simplicity, it’s design and the fact that it has everything I need for a desktop OS. For sure, some features can be found in other distros, but I like the general look and feel of Desktop/LX: artwork, yes, but also integration with the Windows network, nice control panel, good selection of software (you don’t have to choose between 25 text editors or 6 browsers), and well integrated update and software download systems.
While you can debate for an eternity about such and such distro is better than the other, my time (like yours) is precious and it’s worth the few extra $$ to pay to get a distro that just works out of the box.
Thank you for a very well thought out and intelligent posting
When I pointed these issues out some time ago with ordering, customer support and website I was edited, censored and not allowed to post on the forum anymore. I was told the “Customer is not always right” policy was in effect at Lycoris and I pointed out that this will hurt the company in the future. Judging by all the bad news and posting on Lycoris.org and the website still linking to their old products and now Joe announcing changes the “Customer is always right” approach must be sinking in slowly.
Hmmm… Even if you think that having time-limited Linux distribution that is overwhelmingly GPL goes against the GPL you must still understand it is an evaluation CD and not supposed to be installed permanently, but is rather meant as a way to evaluate your need to buy the complete (finished) product.
<IMHO>
That said I do think having a time limit on any Linux CD is not such a good idea as there are plenty freely available Linux distributions out there that deliver a good desktop collection which doesn’t have such artificial constraints. I think an existing Lycoris user probably will have no problem with the evaluation CD as such a person would already have decided to upgrade to the newest version. A person that haven’t used Lycoris before, would probably settle for another freely available CD distributions like SuSE Personal or even Professional 9.1 and my current favourite Ubuntu that has no such limitations.
</IMHO>
Who the hell would install an OS, knowing they’d have to install something else after 45 days? (probally losing all their data in the process).
There is no timebomb. you will NOT loose your work after 45 days. The 45 days use is all based on the honor system.
Like the poster just before you said, this isn’t something you are intended to install as an OS to start working on, but more like _evaluating_ if the OS fits your need, then deciding if you buy it or move to something else.
Well, sine I used to be a great fan of Lycoris, I rushed to download this iso release– only to be extremely dissapointed. Normally I take a few weeks to try out an operating system before giving any judgements– but with Lycoris 1.4 those weeks would’ve been hell. It’s simply too slow and unresponsive. And no, it ain’t my hardware.
Pity. I’ll wait for 1.5
.
Makes me glad I left Lycoris, sounds like they want to go the MS route. Another Bill Gates in the making :sigh:
>>Wait for the fixes or refund their money!…This sort of practice is complete bullshit!
So you’re saying they charged you before the item shipped? That is most unusal for a professional company. Email them about it again.
Is there no way to buy a license key if I like it? I don’t want to install it, test it then have to reinstall it to get a full licensed version!
They got to do better then that!
Keep your crippleware attitude out of Linux. Man, can you tell that these guys used to work for Microsoft?
They just don’t get it.
I bet you they have “tons” of people lining up for this piece of garbage.
Two years ago I had a lot of respect for Lycoris.. they had a one cd distribution with a variety of useful applications, a wonderful theme for KDE, and a really nice support site. (I think it was called the greenhouse.)
I downloaded the ISO from the site, and used Lycoris for a good month because I was new to Linux and there support site was really helpful. The distro had some serious problems to it on my machine (my cd-rom could never be mounted) but I still bought a CD-Key license for $30 USD.
I was a happy Lycoris user for a few more months.. then the company became money hungry and started charging money for software based on OSS (their office suite, games, etc)
Now they want to charge you to use their software after 45 days?
That’s ^really not cool.
from the screen shots Lycoris might still be a good distro. I was also a fan once but I rather wait for my Ubuntu CD in my mailbox. Anyways, i wish Lycoris goodluck!
While the shipping of Lycoris 1.4 has been less than desirable; Lycoris has acknowledged its mistake and is making efforts to correct this. If you see in their forums people have started receiving their packages both sides of the Atlantic.
I mailed Lycoris about the status of my order and got a reply from them in a very commendable time.
Mistakes happen, what matters is that we correct them, learn from them and ensure that it does not happen again. I have faith that Lycoris is doing just that.
As for the free/payment complaint; one of the pioneers of the open source movement gave a speech in my college a long time ago, I quote what he said, “When you think of free, think free speech not free beer”.
A distribution with license terms this strict isn’t particularly free-as-in-speech, either.
Why do certain people in the linux communtity balk at the idea that they actually have to pay for software? If you are using linux because you want a free ride then I think you have missed the point about linux. People have to eat don’t they? People have to pay bills? Lycoris costs money to make, it costs money to provide bandwidth for the downloads. Why are so many people against giving these people money for a product? Its not a communist society we live in is it? Support the company that makes these distros, dont take advantage, or you will be responsible for killing them off.
Think about it…
If so I would not touch it with a 1000 foot pole…
I agree with you that some Linux distros should not be free; I purchased a CD-Key for Lycoris long ago, (and have purchased many other Linux CDs over time as well)
Did you look to see the price that Lycoris wants for their office suite? $50 USD for free software that is rebadged with their logo. $20 for a few games that are easily downloadable for free.
I could see charging a small fee for this ‘software paks’ but Lycoris prices are insane.