On Wed, 2007-10-31 at 08:14 +0000, Andy Green wrote: > Somebody in the thread at some point said: > > > His position is the same as mine that if the GPL stops you **utterly in > > your tracks** from doing useful stuff, then the old-school "Right Thing" > > principle kicks in. You look for a solution, any solution to get the job > > done. Something is rotten in Denmark when the goal is being righteous as > > The GPL doesn't stop you combining stuff, it stops you distributing some > combinations. That's a bit different. Proprietary licensed stuff is > far worse, you can't redistribute it AT ALL or you get chucked in jail. Please explain. If nVidia states on their site that it's perfectly ok to redistribute their driver package, then it's Richard Stallman that is going to chuck me in jail? <cackles hugely and smirks> > This and his unwillingness to converge on any agreement different > from his starting position is my problem with Les' complaints, despite I > have seen him say a lot of smart things otherwise. All I have gathered is that his stance is that it shouldn't be a show stopper until a better solution is found. When I worked in Installation Support, back when, it was not uncommon for us to recommend OSS to enable a users sound card. While Hannu did a bunch of support for a free OSS for Linux, the version he sold for a mere $10 was better. Oddball sound cards (mainly the on-board variety) became usable and people were happy. We had our queues cleared out of sound card problems too, nor did anyone every complain about the GPL. The end-user was enjoined to not redistribute the commercial version of OSS. > Sometimes you have to use proprietary stuff to do what you need to do at > all -- but it wasn't that long ago that 100% proprietary was the only > choice. Now for a lot of us it is the unusual case at the edge on our > PCs and even outside of PCs FOSS solutions are creeping into the other > devices around us too. It probably always will. Compromise. A wonderful and beautiful word. Perspective, also a word that you'll probably never hear used enough by those in Power & Authority (or by those that want to be in that position). > But choosing to use a proprietary solution as the enduser is different > from changing the basis of a Free distro to include it. Whereas we > individually might have to compromise to go on, the ideal shouldn't be > compromised (he said, trying not to think about firmware exceptions). > > -Andy > -- ================================================ My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say: "There are two Great Sins in the world... ..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity. Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad. Linux user# 44256 Sign up at: http://counter.li.org/ http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/oar http://www.wayward4now.net <---down4now too ================================================
