On Sat, 2006-06-17 at 21:03 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote: > On Sat, 2006-06-17 at 12:35, Craig White wrote: > He has tried to redefine the term 'free' to mean restricted > and certainly is the major force in the GPL community. But > don't confuse that with open source in general. Less > restricted licenses and projects using them continue with > their success and useful purpose. ---- I let RMS, the FSF, etc. speak for themselves as they have an entire web site, books, legal opinions and others far more articulate than I to describe their intent. The simple fact is that Linux is GPL, has always been and will always be. If you want to opt out of GPL and use open source, BSD is most likely your best option. ---- > > > GPL is the assurance that the code never legally enters some companies > > proprietary packages. GPL means that an effort to 'embrace, extend and > > extinguish' can never occur (as long as we are on the Microsoft topic). > > But, with less restricted code whatever the original authors > want to publish remains free and available regardless of what > anyone else does with it. The only net result of the GPL > is a reduction in the available choices. Someone can't add > a proprietary improvement and sell it for the incremental > difference. Which means I don't have the option to buy that. ---- dude - there's even less device drivers available for BSD than for Linux. There isn't any 'taint' from GPL license on BSD. That's such a huge hole in your argument that it renders your argument pointless. ---- > > > I can appreciate that Les' big axe here is device drivers - he has made > > that clear enough over time because Linux packaging can never make use > > of proprietary device drivers for companies that cannot or will not > > release their drivers as open source. His supposition is that the GPL > > prevents them from doing so and it many cases, this is likely true. > > That's just today's hot button. The point is that there is a > lot of other code around, some of it available under terms > an end user might find attractive, and none of it can be > used as an improvement to any GPL'd component. ---- Thank the higher powers for that. Your opinions suggest that people are too stupid to realize that they are contributing unintentionally to an evil code base...GPL license code base. Companies and people who contribute to the GPL code base are undoubtedly choosing with intent to do so. At least you're not alone in your opinion...Steve Balmer would wholeheartedly agree with you. ---- > > > Anyone who remembers the BSD TCP/IP code stack in Windows NT knows why > > some people prefer GPL license over BSD type licenses...it absolutely > > prevents the 'embrace, extend, extinguish' of donated code making its > > way into proprietary software. > > Beg to differ here. Microsoft originally wrote their own code > and anyone who had to co-exist on a LAN with those early > products (like the win95 version that got the retry timer > backwards and increased the rate instead of backing off on > congested networks) ---- I specifically said Windows NT (NOT Win95, etc.) what are you disagreeing with? ---- > should have been thrilled when they > got it right somewhere around win98se/win2k no matter where > they got the code. Everyone benefits when a well tested, > secure code base is reused instead of starting from > scratch and re-inventing all the protocol incompatibilities > and security exploits that have already been solved in > free code. As much as I dislike Microsoft's monopoly, I'd > prefer that they sensibly use as much correctly working > code as possible to avoid disrupting everything else. ---- yeah but people who contributed code to GPL projects didn't have to buy it back from Microsoft whereas other license code has made it into Microsoft software. ---- > > > yeah, so it slows down development of device drivers...big deal > > And where patents are involved the slowdown will be for the > life of the patent - or until someone contributes it to the > public. ---- umm...patents and licensing are different topics altogether. and if these companies don't want to put out device drivers for Linux, their devices may not work on Linux...I can live with that. As Linux market penetration increases, there is more and more pressure on these companies to release device drivers for use on Linux. I see companies like Dell that created dkms which enables them to put out a dynamically self-updating device driver that upgrades itself with each new kernel release. I see companies like Nvidia putting out drivers for their hardware. Things are continually improving. I note without much surprise that Apple doesn't contribute the device drivers that they have developed back to the BSD community. Craig
