On Sat, 2006-06-17 at 12:19, bruce wrote:
> i'm mildy amused by your postings.. but your comment...
>
> -->>If you had read any of the postings, you should know that my
> complaint is that the GPL has done more than anything else to
> keep Microsoft in business and a monopoly.<<----
>
> is outright ludacris!!!!
>
> msoft has been impacted by the GPL.. and more specifically Open Source, but
> given that some of the larger projects are GPl, the two are more or less
> intertwined... without the GPL/Open Source, Linux/Apache would have simply
> been competitive offerings to MSoft apps.. and one can actually argue that
> the apps wouldn't have been made at all.. and without linux/apache, would
> you really have the explosive growth of internet companies...
First note that the Apache License is most emphatically not
the GPL - and they've made a point of keeping it that way,
and there's really nothing different in this context about
linux/apache or bsd/apache. So the restrictions of the GPL
are not involved in the use of free and open source software.
> so please, rework your logic...
If you need a simple example, pick any device where the
vendor supplies drivers under non-GPL terms that use
all of the hardware's special features. Microsoft will
almost certain include a copy with their OS. Linux
won't and can't. People use the OS that works. The few
vendors like Nvidia that try to work around this restriction
by providing drivers as modules have an additional difficulty
posed by the changing API in the kernel (unrelated to the
GPL but equally responsible for this particular problem).
And that describes the situation where it is everyone's
interest to include the code. A bigger problem is where
a third party with no particular interest in whether Linux
includes their code or not holds the patent controlling it
as is the case with mp3 and dvd playing code and was
earlier with compression and encryption code that was
widely needed.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
