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My ConcernMy ConcernPosted Aug 31, 2006 19:11 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)In reply to: My Concern by emkey Parent article: Fedora Core to drop openmotif
Just don't mention the licensce because to me that has zero validity.I guess that is because you are not a distributor. Or a redistributor -- imagine you had to make a living out of delivering Linux to your customers, you had to modify the default qmail binary and the license forbid it. Imagine you cannot repackage a custom Ubuntu for your family and friends. I do not care about it being 100% compliant with some particular idiological stance.Licensing is not ideological, it is a fairly practical issue. It is what allows you to modify and customize free software to your liking. Having a solid base to stand upon is important if your business is going to depend on software. In this case, the Open Group requires that you distribute Open Motif solely "on, with, or for operating systems which are themselves Open Source programs". The license requires you to worry about licensing of all other pieces; if you want to distribute this thing you have to be holier than Stallman. I think it is a delightful irony. In particular I take a negative view of moves towards an idiological stance that is counter productive to Linux being a viable alternative to Microsoft.No offense, but I think you have some conceptual confusion there. Linux is no alternative to Microsoft -- Microsoft is a company and Linux is a kernel (or, in the broad sense, a family of operating systems sharing a kernel). To deliver a comparable system (or, as current parlance has it, a "stack") as Microsoft provides, you have to mix software from very diverse sources: Linux from kernel.org, GNU utilities, X libraries, OpenOffice.org suite (from Sun), MySQL (from MySQL AB)... If all of these pieces carried incompatible licenses nobody would be able to put together a distribution. If any of these programs had licenses which prohibited distribution of modified versions, distributors would be unable to patch the software if, say, a security flaw was discovered. Of course if any software came without source code or with an NDA, you would not be able to learn what your computer is doing without the author's permission. Finally, if lawyers have to disentangle a web of n*n interactions, where 'n' is the number of non-free licenses in a distribution, you have better keep a large legal department; this leaves community distributions out in the cold. Again, no ideological stance. Frankly, if you think these things are not important, practical issues and you dislike Microsoft so much, then you might be better off with other alternatives like Mac OS X.
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My Concern Posted Aug 31, 2006 22:14 UTC (Thu) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link] Linux isn't just a kernel. For better or worse the word has come to encompase the whole enchalada. You and I may know and care that it is in fact made up of many different components, some of which pre date the Linux kernel by a decade or more but to the average consumer/business that is all useless detail.
I understand your point about incompatible or overly restrictive licenses and don't disagree. In those cases distributotors will have to make a choice, as will consumers. If the outcry against non free software in Linux were just over such situations I wouldn't really care.
What I do care about is people calling for the removal of all non free software. Even in instances where the risk is minimal or non existent and the cost is high. Device drivers for instance.
Cripple Linux and you strengthen Microsoft. Cripple Linux and you make Bill Gates and associates very happy people.
My Own Concern Posted Aug 31, 2006 23:46 UTC (Thu) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link] "Cripple Linux and you strengthen Microsoft. Cripple Linux and you make Bill Gates and associates very happy people."
The increasing prevalence of this argument from people like you and ESR is what concerns ME. You know, not everyone is obsessed with using Linux only because it harms Microsoft or makes Bill Gates angry. For many of us, they are totally irrelevant. The "Free" part of Free Software is not about cost or convenience, it is about being able to do what I want when I want with my computer. If this is too "ideological" for you, so be it, but IMHO Linux would not be where it is today if people had decided earlier on that compromising on the freedom was just fine so long as it hurt Microsoft enough. So what if this means Linux won't take over the world tomorrow, I don't see how closed-source-Linux-dominated industry is any better that a Windows-dominated industry.
My Own Concern Posted Sep 2, 2006 6:42 UTC (Sat) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link] You clearly don't understand where Bill Gates and Microsoft are heading. You won't be able to run Linux on anything if they win the day. Think about DRM and the implications of some of the hardware initiatives associated with it.
Also, as I've said before... Your freedom is fine so long as it doesn't impinge on my ability to make choices and get work done.
Free alternatives Posted Sep 1, 2006 22:53 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] What I do care about is people calling for the removal of all non free software. Even in instances where the risk is minimal or non existent and the cost is high. Device drivers for instance.You will appreciate that the goal of such removals is not to bother people, but to encourage the development and adoption of free alternatives. These alternatives are important especially for device drivers: imagine what would happen if Microsoft were to buy ATI and nVidia tomorrow with their huge cash reserves, and withdraw their proprietary drivers; they could even remove permission to distribute the last available versions. A lot of users would get burned instantly and leave the platform in droves. While a gradual removal of proprietary drivers can be handled more or less gracefully. If you are talking about firmware binary blobs, then I'm not sure about their legal status. From what little I've read about it, it is hard to know what would happen if publishing companies turned evil. It is however easy to see that free versions would have no problems, so nurturing free replacements would still seem to be a worthy goal. In both cases you are right that suddenly removing all proprietary bits would be instant disaster, but a gradual replacement and removal policy doesn't seem so far out to me.
Free alternatives Posted Sep 2, 2006 6:45 UTC (Sat) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link] Free drivers will always lag. And if past experience is any indicator they will lag significantly. Reverse engineering takes time and is seldom perfect. Throw in the fact that there are provisions in the digital millenium copyright act that make reverse engineering illegal and the picture gets even more grim if the scenario you outline were to happen.
Free alternatives Posted Sep 2, 2006 10:53 UTC (Sat) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Free drivers will always lag. And if past experience is any indicator they will lag significantly.The majority of drivers on my Linux system are at least as good as their proprietary counterparts. I don't see them lagging in any significant way. Only graphics drivers, and only for 3D, and only for modern cards without specs, and only from ATI and nVidia, lag. This is a transient status: past experience seems to indicate that free drivers will eventually get there (as they have for Wi-Fi cards) and then surpass proprietary equivalents. We are already there for Intel, and with the recent acquisition of ATI it might change faster than we think. [...] there are provisions in the digital millenium copyright act [...]Those provisions are only for copyright protection measures, do not fear.
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