Craig White wrote:
On Tue, 2006-02-14 at 13:32 -0600, Mike McCarty wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
No, that should be a different topic: How the GPL sabotages open
source adoption. The GPL restrictions have done more to
maintain the Microsoft monopoly than any Microsoft employee.
Even when a vendor tries their best to supply drivers it
doesn't work out very well and they aren't accepted in the
distributions.
Well said, Les.
----
there are many forms of open source licenses that aren't GPL and a
vendor can supply drivers using a form more suitable to their liking if
they wish...I guess I missed Les' point.
Well, you need to read the GPL and LGPL more closely.
In order to produce a runnable program (or a driver)
one needs to link with libraries. These libraries
are either GPL or LGPL, makes not much difference.
Both GPL and LGPL have virus-like properties of infecting
all the source for the whole program, causing the producers
to reveal their special interface. So, they can't legally
hide the code which knows trade secrets about the hardware.
To keep the hardware proprietary, they can't reveal the
program source, and they can't link the object without revealing
the source, so they don't produce a driver for Linux.
I hope that wasn't too turgid.
Mike
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