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Who is doing harm here?Who is doing harm here?Posted Oct 9, 2006 17:01 UTC (Mon) by malor (subscriber, #2973)In reply to: Who is doing harm here? by wookey Parent article: Busy busy busybox
In my opinion, the difference is that the FSF is thinking about freedom in a multi-generational timeframe, and the kernel devs want success/market dominance *right now*. And they appear willing to trade off freedom to get it.
If you think about it from the perspective of tens or hundreds of years, Linux is not that important; it's essentially the early scaffolding for a great cathedral of code. But, unlike the real multi-hundred-year cathedral projects, I don't think these scaffold builders are even aware that a cathedral will ever exist.
The FSF is right not to bend on this issue; if we want truly free computers, it's incredibly important. Eventually, GPLv3 code will be such an overwhelming presence that it would be insane to try to compete with it in any but the smallest niches.
If, however, the foundation is flawed, the cathedral may collapse. The architect has identified flaws in the design, and is redrawing the blueprints. The scaffold builders are upset about this. Either the cathedral won't look quite how they thought, or they think their project IS the cathedral.
The most popular free kernel, a hundred years from now, may even be called Linux, but it will be related to today's kernel only in the sense that modern man is related to the chimpanzee. But the GPLv3 may very well still be in force. Law, especially good law, lasts a LOT longer than code.
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