From: "Sean" <seanlkml@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
On Sun, 18 Jun 2006 12:23:37 -0500
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Nvidia claims that their contracts with the chip vendors prohibits
them from releasing details or a GPL'd driver. If it is possible
to put a license-agnostic layer between components that the
FSF can't threaten with their interpretations of 'work as a whole'
and without a big performance hit, the issue might go away.
People argue about all kinds of things. It doesn't change anything
about the nature, intent and legality of the GPL license. It is what
it is, DEAL WITH IT or go AWAY, preferably both.
I think you and Les are arguing to cross purposes. Les is simply
stating that the GPL is not necessarily good for consumers or users.
The users lose out on many features they'd like to have. The hurt
to nVidia is much less than the inconvenience to users who would like
to use Linux with nVidia cards. That arguably hurts Linux, too.
As to who and how the GPL hurts people or companies making it good,
evil, agnostic, confused, or anything else that is a view each person
can make for herself or himself. Whether it hurts developers or not
is up to the opinion of the developer. It actually simplifies my life.
I develop for Windows and keep the Linux system alive as a server for
various networking needs. I don't feel any compulsion to develop for
two quite different environments. Besides even if I could charge for
software such as I make under a Linux environment I could not make
near as much as with the Windows environment. But I would like to
share the tools with Linux folks for roughly the cost of creating it
for Linux folks. No can do. So I don't. The losers are arguably
the Linux USERS not me. (Which leads me to an observation that Linux
users who try to make Linux into a USERs machine rather than a server
must be into self abuse in other nasty ways, too. {^_-})
{^_^}
