Date: Fri, 17 Mar 2000 21:58:32 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in (Rahul Siddharthan) Cc: brett@lariat.org (Brett Glass), freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: On "intelligent people" and "dangers to BSD" Message-ID: <200003172158.OAA22020@usr02.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.20.0003172221550.1530-100000@theory1.physics.iisc.ernet.in> from "Rahul Siddharthan" at Mar 17, 2000 10:49:48 PM
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> Take also the ongoing discussion here about whether BSDI will > have a lot of binary-only drivers under NDA to the detriment of > FreeBSD. A lot of linux people will argue that the GPL protects > against that sort of thing. I'm not saying they're right, only > that they may want to use the GPL for good reasons of their own, > without being in any way part of Stallman's "agenda". Actually, as a participant in that discussion, I have to say that the GPL does not protect against it. If an NDA is required for the hardware information, then there would simply not be a GPL'ed driver. It would not force release of the programming information, nor GPL'ing of a released driver, which amounts to the same thing. As long as it is possible to avoid th GPL, commercial interests will do so, for as long as they have investments to recoup. > The GPL is a tool: it is not under the control of its creator. > And hardly any end-users will be concerned about ideological > issues of license. Arguments about license are the worst way to > promote an OS, You mean detract from an OS. > except for commercial developers to whom the fewer restrictions > of BSD may really matter. BSD has enough other strengths to boast > about without bringing Stallman's alleged hidden agenda into it > and turning off people who may otherwise be quite open-minded > about trying BSD. The people who say "Don't use Linux because it is GPL'ed" are idiots. At the same time, so are the people who say that the GPL is not an instrumentality of the GNU Manifesto (technically a poor one; the Cygnus eCOS license is actually a much better instrumentality of the GNU Manifesto). So people who say "Use Linux because it is GPL'ed" are also idiots. I can believe that, for example, membership in the Itzamuzu religion is the greatest thing because of their high moral stance, derived from their scriptures. That doesn't relieve me of the responsibility that the scripture of this religion technically requires human sacrifice of non-Itzamuzuites proportional to their availability in the local community (i.e. one out of 12) every 213 years. Just because it is year 75 in the cycle I joined up in, doesn't mean that I should zeolously recruit other Itzamuzuites without considering that in 138 years, their descendants might repeat the atrocities of 1925. One has to think of the consequences of ones actions before they engage in them, or they should be prepared to be criticized for not doing so. Part of adopting the GPL is implicit support for the majority GNU manifesto. It's not support for the whole thing (as I said, it's a poor instrumentality), but it's support for a large enough part of it that you should read it before advocating GPL to others. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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