Open Source "State of the Union" address

Posted Aug 7, 2003 18:24 UTC (Thu) by mmarq (guest, #2332)
Parent article: Open Source "State of the Union" address

As an Open-Source user and supporter, i belive the all movement face more serious trouble than the SCO DIVERSION...

1) Inspite resistence from it's original author, Linux, the most influencial and importante piece of Open-Source (like it or not), has a technical driven evolution vision, but is mostly sponsered by Marketing entitys, as is centered on OSDL, and wich include SUN now (could have Lindows aswell) that had no regrets in signing a licence with SCO, that by following public comments was only to gain "marketing" space by saying "He are save from litigation"... IMHO this is not acceptable that when the push comes to shove what's importante is marketing and profit, even less in a technical driven project, even less among partners,... and as the Ottawa Summit was mostly around "Super-computers", i belive its only time what separates IBM from showing itself not much better than SUN(even if they smach SCO).

2) in a rogue manner we can say that all started 20 years ago, in an attempt to get technical information to wright a driver for a printer...
20 years later, and after the formation of the "Free Hardware Foundation", i belive "IT'S PRETTY CLEAR" that the "gross" hardware industry will never colaborate with Open-Source in a open-source manner.... those that cry for patience, allover native code always, and UDI was a desgrace,... dont pay attention that ,example among to many, NVIDEA "deceive" them an only deliver binary forms, and that a "ZELOT" attitude is very counterproductive.... A "COMPROMISE" and another API/ABI, besides LSB, is badly needed,... invent, and dont use UDI !,...ever.

3)"Reverse Engeniring",... if a compromise is not achieved, and the gross of the hardware industry fall behind the M$ umbrella, it will be just IMPOSSIBLE to make drivers for DRM locked hardware, that is, you could make a replica of the all car but when you make a replica of the key, you go to prison. Why would you want a car if you cant use it ?.... This is a decisive stop in all open-source "hardware device driver" making,... just ask the Debian Lab guys if they are willing to go to prison!?.

NOTE: As stated above as that what is importante is marketing and profit, i cannot see a problem here for the big IBM , SUN or HP,... they make there own CHIPSETs and CPUs, so reverse engeneiring is not a issue!... that is why SUN has joined the OSDL, and why DELl as started the DKMS development as they need "others" CHIPSETs.... i'm i being "NASTY" ???... when IBM, SUN and HP release technical data of their hardware that permits "ANYONE" to make Open-Source drivers, then i'll prostate myself in penitence.

4) All Goes Well (tm), the gross of the hardware industry fall behind Linux wiht open source drivers, M$ DRM machines rapidly go towards a niche market position, but then,... Linux has a problem, because it's not hard to imagine, isnt it, that it has over 1 million drivers(for 5-7 years old hardware) in the source, wich (sources) could easly reach near 1 Giga or beyond, and it toke 4,5 or 6 years to get to a stable version,.... i belive that those who say never mind, are willing to deliver cigarretes to Linus in the Lune house, or are willing to be one of him's 102 ltenents...
IMHO, for maitainability Linux has to get "device drivers" separeted from the kernel.

Open Source "State of the Union" address

Posted Aug 7, 2003 18:37 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] (7 responses)

I know it's a bad style to criticize spelling of comments, but your comment is hard to read. Maybe you were in a state of great excitement, but it's a bad excuse. Spending some time spellchecking your comment would give you a chance to cool down and express your thoughts in a more coherent way.

Open Source "State of the Union" address

Posted Aug 7, 2003 18:58 UTC (Thu) by josh_stern (guest, #4868) [Link] (2 responses)

The author above made a thoughtful and interesting point.

That is that even if Linux is not for sale as a shrinkwrap
product, it may still have a legal identity as an integrated
product. When we consider that the greater diversity of
sources for various hardware drivers and the larger range
of patents that they might potentially infringe on, it is
worthwhile to ask whether Linux, the product, could
achieve greater legal insulation by separating drivers into
a different set of products - a kind of legal fireline to
prevent small fires from turning into big ones. This idea
deserves serious consideration on its merits.

Open Source "State of the Union" address

Posted Aug 7, 2003 19:09 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (1 responses)

> various hardware drivers and the larger range
> of patents that they might potentially infringe on

I've haven't yet heard of a patent infringement within a driver.

The patent infringments of Linux that I've heard about are in the virtual memory and filesystem code. Not so easy to break out.

Anyway, it's the distros that will get targeted, they'd still have to include all the drivers.

Ciaran O'Riordan

Open Source "State of the Union" address

Posted Aug 7, 2003 20:37 UTC (Thu) by josh_stern (guest, #4868) [Link]

In the case of SCO, they are specifically targeting the Linux kernel as
an integrated product.

I'm afraid that Bruce may prove prophetic when his says that we
have only heard the very beginning of the patent wars.

Of course stuff like virtual memory is not something to be broken out,
but because device drivers interact with a huge assortment of different
'stuff' out there in the world, I believe there is more
potential for them to touch a wide range of patents - especially ones
that are not familiar to software developers. Suppose, for instance,
it turned out that some obscure individual had a patent on a certain
method of scheduling and driving ham radios using a computer device,
and he decided that Linux infringes on his method. In that case, it
would be a good thing if rich Linux targ^H^H^H^Husers with no ham
radio driver involvement had prima facie nothing to do with his claim.

Open Source "State of the Union" address

Posted Aug 7, 2003 19:28 UTC (Thu) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link] (3 responses)

I belive you know Open-Source is a worldwide movement.
And i know that there must be lots of orthographic errors in it,... but the content and the spirit is perfectly understandble...

...should i state that you do not make sense because you can not wright in Protuguese... or am i trying to replay to someone at IBM, HP or SUN !

Mario Marques
Portugal
Setubal

Open Source "State of the Union" address

Posted Aug 7, 2003 20:58 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] (2 responses)

You are still not following my advice. "wright" and "replay" are English words, but "Protuguese" is not! It looks like you are trying to replay the intro to "Zero Wing" :-)

I must respectfully disagree that your comment was "perfectly understandble". It's wasn't understandable for me, which prompted my comment.

Open Source "State of the Union" address

Posted Aug 7, 2003 22:37 UTC (Thu) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

Other have understood it!... just read all the comments above this one.

Open Source "State of the Union" address

Posted Aug 8, 2003 8:52 UTC (Fri) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link]

Maybe you should consider getting a hobby or something. Not everyone knows english equally well, and it is not reasonable to demand that people who are less able must spend a lot of time spell and grammar -checking everything before participating in a debate.

A bad argument does not improve noticeably from being spellchecked, nor does a good argument degrade very much from containing a few stray errors.