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Let's not try to sweeten it

Let's not try to sweeten it

Posted Aug 27, 2004 19:03 UTC (Fri) by ncm (subscriber, #165)
In reply to: Let's not try to sweeten it by xav
Parent article: Linux loses the Philips webcam driver

You're not paying attention. We didn't just lose the binary driver, we lost the whole thing, and the maintainer besides. And all for nothing, really. This is something the FSF people understand better than the Linux kernel people do: confrontations usually produce heat, not light.


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Let's not try to sweeten it

Posted Aug 27, 2004 19:23 UTC (Fri) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link]

Yes, I understand that the "confrontation" was unfortunate and likely unnecessary. However I'm not so convinced that it was entirely the fault of the kernel maintainer. The driver author's own words seem to indicate that he (too?) was unwilling to bend. If he had/does submit the crippled, yet fully-open version of his driver, then I'm sure there would be little issue getting it merged into the kernel. Hopefully in the future he or some other knowledgeable person will do just that.

So in my original post (and this one as well) my aim was not to take either person's side but the side of free software itself. It's unfortunate that the free software got taken out of the kernel, yet just as unfortunate that one insists on only supporting driver with the binary-only parts included. I still conclude: both sides lose, but the net result is that free software wins (i.e. the kernel stays free).

Let's not try to sweeten it

Posted Aug 31, 2004 7:58 UTC (Tue) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link]

> We didn't just lose the binary driver, we lost the whole thing, and the
> maintainer besides.

No, the GPL code is still available to all under the GPL. We lost only the current maintainer.

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