Kororaa and the GPL - The Final Word

[Posted October 18, 2006 by ris]

The Kororaa project started out as a binary install method for Gentoo Linux. It is still useful for that, but as a side project the Kororaa LiveCD was designed to showcase AIGLX, Xgl, compiz, KDE, Gnome, Gentoo and Kororaa technologies. When the live CD was first announced last May the project was accused of GPL violations because proprietary nVidia and ATI drivers were included in the distribution.

This week we received a note from Jakob Petsovits pointing out that Kororaa no longer includes any proprietary modules on the live CD. An official statement is available at the project's web site:

Do we make an exception just because these drivers give us unprecedented 3D support under Linux? Is that fair?

So in closing, at this stage I have decided to take the opinion that non-GPL modules are violations of the Linux kernel and are also unethical. This means we will not build non-GPL drivers against the kernel and as such Kororaa will not be shipping non-GPL modules in any future products. Of course if the end user believes non-GPL drivers are acceptable, then he/she is free to install them on their own system. For myself however, I am using the Linux kernel to create a product. If it was not for Linux then it would not exist and I therefore have a responsibility to respect the license of the kernel.

Kororaa AIGLXgl 0.3 Live CD is available, without any non-GPL video card drivers.

Kororaa and the GPL - The Final Word

Posted Oct 19, 2006 1:26 UTC (Thu) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link]

> at this stage I have decided to take the opinion that non-GPL modules
> are violations of the Linux kernel and are also unethical. This means
> we will not build non-GPL drivers against the kernel and as such
> Kororaa will not be shipping non-GPL modules in any future products.

Excellent.

The pressure to put just a few pieces of "essential" non-free software into an otherwise-free operating system will be strong, and likely will increase in the short term. It's good to see that some distributors can, after careful consideration, respect their users's freedom more than expedience.

Great!

Posted Oct 19, 2006 4:19 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] (1 responses)

I applaud this decision even though the new Kororaa is not likely to show its "full plumage" on any of my systems. The main thing is that the distribution is alive. If I need a system with proper 3D functionality, I'll buy such system.

Great!

Posted Oct 26, 2006 9:53 UTC (Thu) by quintesse (guest, #14569) [Link]

And what kind of system would that be? Or are you suggesting you would buy Windows or Mac? Because I'm not aware of any Linux system with "proper" 3D support. (Although "proper" for me not only means "fully functioning" and "using OSS drivers", but also means being able to use 3D acceleration on par with current high-end video cards)