On Fri, Apr 06, 2007 at 09:46:28AM -0500, Marco Peereboom wrote:
> What you people seem to miss in the whole discussion here is that Linux
> people contact vendors IN PRIVATE if they find GPL violations yet a
> valuable member of the open source community does not get the same
> courtesy. Only bad things happen when one looks at Linux code. This is
> yet another example of it. This also underscores once more that Linux
> as a community is dead.
>
May I offer the perspective of one coming from Linux? I'm not a
developer, I'm a user of Debian (since 2001).
This should have been handled in private in a respectful manner. The
two parties could have quickly released an agreed statement of facts
that left the public clear that a mistake had been made in uploading
something to the cvs under the wrong licence. My guess (I'm no lawyer)
is that if the GPL people started out with a public accusation like this
towards a corporation, then they would be facing a slander and lible
suit.
The GPL is based partly on fear and partly on spite:
Fear that code written to work with device A will be
incorporated into the firmware of device B whos maker will make
it closed-source. Some poor shmuck who has to reverse-engineer
device B so it works will, when successful, find that the
resultant driver is very similar to the free driver for device
A.
Fear also that a technique written for GNU/Linux will be
incorporated into the 'competition' (e.g. a popular commercial
non-*NIX OS).
Spite: since hardware makers make it difficult to access their
devices by not releasing specs, why would a developer want their
hard work being used by a hardware maker; let them do their own
work. This tarrs all hardware makers by the same brush.
The Linux community is a divided one: just look at the number of
different distros, differentiated to large extent by philosophy and
'religion' than on technology. There's also a lot of concern over the
proposed GPLv3 going too far copyleft. Personally, I don't use a
licence I can't understand. Unless I can understand the final GPLv3, I
won't be using anything licenced under it. As the draft stands right
now, it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
To me, the BSD community is far less divided. As I see it, FreeBSD
allows non-BSD licenced drivers into the code base to access more
hardware devices; NetBSD is more strictly BSD-licence only while
expending a lot of energy maintaining support for any port imaginable;
OpenBSD is like NetBSD focusing on fewer ports with more intensity to
create better, more secure, code.
But _please_, I'm not trying to start a flame fest.
That I should feel the need to put in that sentence indicates a
propensity to react that I think pervades the whole FOSS community.
Respectivly,
Doug.
