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Date:      Sat, 21 Apr 2001 01:11:01 -0600
From:      Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com>
To:        Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>
Cc:        Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com>, freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: MacOS Themes, was RE: Windriver, Slackware and FreeBSD
Message-ID:  <3AE13285.F790DC95@softweyr.com>
References:  <20010418091652.A27000@lpt.ens.fr> <006e01c0c7dd$fd2c1b80$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <20010418102655.E27000@lpt.ens.fr>

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Rahul Siddharthan wrote:
> 
> Ted Mittelstaedt said on Apr 18, 2001 at 01:03:01:
> > >-----Original Message-----
> > >From: Rahul Siddharthan [mailto:rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in]
> > >
> > >Another bit of uneasy news was Apple's threatening a Mac theme editor,
> > >http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_news.cfm?NewsID=2773
> > >Note that this is quite different from threatening themes.org: this
> > >editor was for creating themes for *MacOS itself*.
> > >
> >
> > This is fallout from the Napster decision, I wouldn't worry about it,
> > and indeed the entire Napster thing is just a rehash of the lawsuits
> > over the copy protection software that took place back in the 80's.
> 
> Whatever.  I'm not worried about theme editors for MacOS, but about
> corporate attitudes in general.
> 
> Wind River's action about slackware is not very encouraging.  In any
> case, they don't have any kind of known commitment to free software,

Maybe not known to YOU, but they certainly have a commitment to certain
types of "free software", which is a useless term.  In particular, they
have been a commercial sponsor of GCC/GDB/binutils development for more
than a decade now.

> and (from what I've read about them) no particular motivation for
> donating anything back to FreeBSD.  As such, I'm happy if they hire

They have exactly the same reason Whistle, Yahoo, and others have:
enlightened self-interest.  To them now, a BSD/OS or FreeBSD "design
win" *IS* a WindRiver design win, and folding code into FreeBSD means
they have somebody other than paid employees to help them test, debug,
and maintain it.

> individual FreeBSD people to help them with their embedded system
> work, but I am not happy if the FreeBSD OS itself becomes closely
> associated with such a company -- any more than I would be if
> Transmeta tried to associate itself with linux (which they don't).

They don't?  What rock are you living under?  You apparently haven't
been shopping for Transmeta devices lately.

> People in the linux world complain about the dominance of Red Hat and
> the popular "RH=linux" misconception, but at least RH's commitment to
> free software has never been in doubt.

It hasn't?  What rock are you living under?  I guess you missed the
entire "Linux Standards Base" debate, huh?

-- 
            "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"

Wes Peters                                                         Softweyr LLC
wes@softweyr.com                                           http://softweyr.com/

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