Andy Green wrote:
This problem: ''It's Linux that brings a problem into this picture.''
Mentioned after your noting that Dells ship with MP3 and WMA and "It's
Linux that brings a problem into this picture.". The reason Linux
distros don't ship with that support is patents. I hope that clears up
your sudden attack of 'confusion'.
No, it doesn't clear it up, given that other operating systems are able
to arrange distribution with patented components. I'm not insisting
that this combination be free, just available.
you are willing to meet the licensing terms of all the components you
want to have, no one is allowed to combine them for you if any part is
covered by the GPL and any other part has different restrictions.
These are completely separate areas in law. The GPL operates under
Copyright law. But the work you have fully legitimate copyright to can
easily violate dozens of patents, which is regulated by a completely
separate body of patent law. Let's imagine your enduser view of the GPL
making problems was solved. Say the GPL became BSD overnight. Still
Redhat cannot bundle mp3 players due to patent law.
They would no longer be constrained by licensing to not add components
with different redistribution restrictions. So they could bundle
anything they want as long as the license requirements were met
independently.
I have to say I noted the irony of your using Alan Cox's code in the
networking stack to piss him off. Seems your complaints should be
tempered by some recognition that a lot of work went into giving us this
stuff for free. Without acknowledging the debt, your complaints sound
like a teenager complaining about how unfair his life is, while he lives
under a roof he doesn't have to pay for, eats food, wears clothes that
are given to him.
Is there something unique about the linux kernel that should matter to
me? It is a convenient place to run X, apache, sendmail, perl, nfs,
java, firefox, openoffice, etc. and I use it because it has hijacked
much driver and kernel development that might have gone into the *bsd's
otherwise. But I'll turn your comment around and point out that Linux
wouldn't exist without the design and specification of the original
proprietary version of unix, and those other applications wouldn't exist
without their original proprietary host OS's and in many cases their own
proprietary versions. If you are going to pay homage to the development
cycle, you should point out the irony of the self-serving GPL exception
allowing linkage with proprietary libraries of operating systems that it
happens to need to run and initially couldn't have existed without, yet
denying distribution with other binary-only components. What's that
about acknowledging debt? Meanwhile I still buy copies of Windows and
OS X for my machines because Linux distributions don't (and perhaps
can't ever) include components to do all of the equivalent things.
How is this going to change? I expect encodings to continue to
improve and for people to continue to need a way to fund the
development work. The GPL just doesn't provide a good model to fairly
share those costs and it doesn't co-exist well with the schemes that do.
Yeah that's actually right IMO. About a year ago I had the same
argument with ESR. Proprietary software -- proprietary in the copyright
sense -- is given meaning and a lease of life by proprietary codecs --
proprietary in the patent sense. The two are symbiotic because they can
share revenue. The FOSS "niche" is everywhere else.
Because of great patent-free codecs like Matroska and Vorbis we are not
locked out of participating in audio and video, but the content
rightsholders, by their choice of patent-protected codings, can and will
lock us out of being able to offer their content.
Yes, content is what matters, so those codecs become important when/if
the content you want is available in that encoding. Until the content
vendors give up on DRM by finding out it doesn't sell, that's probably
not going to happen.
And despite ESR's
naive hopes of getting rescued by Linspire, there is nothing that can be
done about it from this side going on. And who to blame? Patent law.
I agree that we'd be better off if software were recognized as math and
not eligible for patents, but the mere existence of a patent doesn't
mean that the terms of licensing have to be unreasonable or that the
license can't be arranged and aggregated by a distributor. However
vendor-provided binary drivers are a more immediate issue relating
specifically to Linux. The mp3 discussion was just a sidetrack since
it's all application level and can be done without inheriting any GPL
restrictions.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
