Man I *love* unforeseen consequences! > > I did read your FAQ but I can't see how it rebuts what has just been > > said. > > You seem to have missed: > Q: What about the BSDs? > > A: What about them? They are free to do whatever they wish, I > have no input into their development at all, sorry.
This is awesome, you protect the vendors by pretending to provide free code. This is so funny that I have tears in my eyes. The GPL has become the new safe harbor for companies who don't want to play in the open source world. Do you really think Sun is GPLing Java because they think it is the right thing to do? The answer might surprise you; they are doing it under pressure from investors because they are not making money. Now how do you give something away but not really? Exactly, Copyrights + GPL. What a fantastic combination! You get inherent patent protection because no one can use your code and copyrights take care of the rest. Now Sun gets to shut up the open source world; hey we "gave" you (some) of our code now didn't we? And they get to pretend to be open source friendly to boot! The GPL hippies are beat at their own game :-) The GPL being used to protect companies and IP! Oh the irony makes me tingle. > > > You seem to be happy with signing NDAs. If the result is a > > readable and understandable GPL'ed driver, companies will be even less > > motivated to release programming documentation. This will lead to a > > GPL-lock-in since you simply replace the vendor not willing to share > > specifications with an NDA'ed GPL developer not willing to share those, > > but GPL code only. > > Well, as my goal is to have a GPL driver for everything, I don't see how > this can hurt :) Sounds like shortsightedness to me. Works for me! Didn't your mommy, or government, tell you to share with others? > > Now others can have different goals, and that's great and fine. I'm not > saying you can't work on something if you wish to do so. > > But for you to try to tell me that I shouldn't work to achive my goal, > as it somehow conflicts with your goals, is pretty rude, don't you > think? I am pretty sure your goals are very much the same. Do a s/GPL/BSD/g > > There is no reason you can not extend the same kind of offer to > companies to help your project achieve success. I can't. I am not for sale for some shinny pebbles. > > > This is not about freedom but about prostitution. > > I'm sorry you feel this way. I am sorry you don't see the damage you are causing. It does illustrate the linux mentality and standards. > > *plonk* More appropriate would be "dee dee dee"
