Date: Sat, 16 May 1998 13:07:29 +0200 From: Eivind Eklund <eivind@yes.no> To: John Kelly <jak@cetlink.net> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: commercial software (definitive) Message-ID: <19980516130729.30106@follo.net> In-Reply-To: <355d5c06.1764517@mail.cetlink.net>; from John Kelly on Sat, May 16, 1998 at 09:41:10AM %2B0000 References: <199805160454.WAA24796@narnia.plutotech.com> <355d5c06.1764517@mail.cetlink.net>
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On Sat, May 16, 1998 at 09:41:10AM +0000, John Kelly wrote:
> >The code we are "hiding" you wouldn't want to touch anyway and most of
> >it is userland code that would not be subject to licensing restrictions
> >anyway.
>
> Then there's little real basis for objection to the GPL.
You're wrong. If you read that more carefully, you'll see that it says
"most of it is userland code".
Some of it is not. Of the part that is not, most (of what I've got at
least) are things you wouldn't use, unless you're developing an
_exact_ clone of our product. These include different performance
tradeoffs compared to the stock kernel ("OK, I'll slow down _this_
part 10 times in favour of _that_ abuse of the driver working
correctly"), and a different filesystem layout to make it more
difficult for people to copy parts of our product and incorporate it
as part of their own.
If I didn't have the assurance that I _can_ choose to do have some of
these things private, I wouldn't have gone with FreeBSD for this
product in the first place (and the product might never have been made
at all).
Another issue of the GPL is how a GPLed kernel extend to LKMs and
userland programs. I know Linus don't want it to cover LKMs/usrland,
but I don't think this issue have been fought in court yet. It would
be interesting to see what would happen if e.g. Microsoft get some
code in the Linux kernel, and then try to sue a competitor for not
releasing source to their products.
Eivind.
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