Since Ubuntu and other Linux Distros are free to download and distribute. Would it be illegal for me to have a Small Business of my own that would charge individuals/small-businesses to Install and Setup Linux desktops. I wasn't sure how that GPL license worked. I figured I would be charging individuals for setting up Linux Desktops on their machines or small business/offices and training/teaching them on the various applications they could install on their own.

Also, would it be illegal to create websites using Apache, Tomcat and other Open Source tools and then sell those sites.

I figured many people are turned off by learning or installing something other than Windows desktops on their pcs, just because it is different.

If this cannot be done under the GPL license, then could someone tell me how I could go about starting my own small business to legally Setup/Install Linux distributions.

Thanks,

All of that is legal and allowed by the GPL (and the other OSS licenses that those tools are licensed under).

IANAL,

Forrest

Yep, the only restriction is that if you supply a GPL distro (outside your own org) you have to supply (or point to) the src also.
Of course, if you don't change the src code, they can easily get it off the net anyway.
Any code you write can have any license you want.
If you link (see compilers) to GPL code, you might have an issue re needing to release your src code as well. I'd google that bit.

IANAL, that's just my understanding in a nutshell.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html for the gory details.

The only thing sounds like you really need is to legalize your business with your City, County, State, Or province. Depending on where you live.

Thank you to the last 3 posts. I really appreciate it.

yes, you can charge what ever you want for SERVICE related to anything FOSS. You can not charge for the code, but that does not mean you can not charge for a DVD or CD with the code on it.

Example:

$199.00 install of a Linux OS on a desktop/laptop/netbook
$20.00 CD/DVD with Linux OS you installed on said desktop/laptop/netbook

That is 100% allowed by any and all of the FOSS license out there. You can not however you can not charge $20.00 for the access to the code.

$199 for an installation. I may hope that is Zimbabwe dollars, not US dollars

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but aren't you allowed to SELL the OSS?
I.e., I can download Apache and start selling it(not the configuration/installation)?
The only restriction that I have is that I ship it with the source code(or point to it) and leave the authors in place?

OK, you're forgiven. You are allowed to sell your services. You don't own the code, so you can't sell that.

in addition to that, like i stated above you can download and sell the CD/DVD you burn the code onto as well. you can charge for your bandwidth, time, media, knowledge, skill, etc... just not for the code it self. that must remain 100% free as in free beer.

Thanks for the Additional posts.

Just so i'm "Crystal" on what i can do, are the following 2 questions below a "yes"...: (blatantly elementary, but this is essentially what I want to do)

"Hello neighbor, I would like to charge you $x to install Ubuntu Linux on your computer..., would you be interested in this offer? "

"Hello again neighbor, yes, I'd like to build a website on your computer for a fee of $x... , would you also be interested in this offer?"

Notice the commonality in your two examples? They're both related to things that *you* are going to do for a fee. You can charge for work that *you* do. This includes downloading, copying to media, installing, configuring, maintenance, running programs (e.g. system administration, periodic malware checks and anything even remotely similar), taking backups, doing restores, building websites, managing websites, etc ad nauseum until you're rich. What you cannot do is sell the software if it's not yours.

Thanks again... I am "Crystal" now :-D

Oh, so then I got it wrong. But I can buy the OSS from you, and redistribute it freely onward, right?
That is, if you are the owner of the code.

You CAN sell the software in either binary or source form even if you don't change a line of code. However, you have to make the source available. For example, CheapBytes has this as their main business.

Forrest