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