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Re: [LI] Re: Fwd: Linux headed for disaster? >> My thoughts <<



2 possibilities:

1.  Linux fails or remains a niche OS, in which case the people who go 
on about preserving their intellectual properties will be happy and
will continue to make their proprietary, anti-social stuff.

2.  Linux succeeds, so the stand that people like Linus Torvalds, RMS,
Manoj and I take (it's OK, I took 3 breaths between the first three
names and the last :-) will be vindicated and the proprietary people
can either continue to develop for MS and guard their increasingly
useless intellectual property, change their points of view when they
find that the world has changed, or as the last alternative go to
Hades and bargain with the Devil over copyright over memories (sorry,
souls are already proprietary) :-)

Regards,

-- Raju

>>>>> "Arun" == Arun Sharma <adsharma@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

    Arun> On Tue, Dec 07, 1999 at 02:06:56PM +0530, C Hanish Menon
    Arun> wrote:
    >>  Thus I can sum up this persons mail as a mearly COMMERCIALY
    >> MOTIVATED stuff than anything else.

    Arun> Your points about the advantages of having an open source
    Arun> driver are very valid. Much newsprint has been dedicated to
    Arun> it already.

    Arun> But there are situations under which people want to preserve
    Arun> their intellectual properties. And they should be free to do
    Arun> so. XFree86 4.0 is being smart here in defining a binary
    Arun> interface. So if a graphic chip vendor wants to release a
    Arun> binary only driver, I can use it with XFree86 4.0. Sure it
    Arun> may not work as well as a source only driver, but it's
    Arun> better than nothing.

    Arun> Using GPL to pry open unwanting people's IPs and then
    Arun> gloating over the righteousness of doing so is pretty
    Arun> amusing to me.

    Arun> As I said on more public forums, I don't think this is a
    Arun> technical decision at all. This is politics. This is why I'm
    Arun> coding for FreeBSD these days.

    Arun> Binary drivers don't work always, but as Windows, Solaris
    Arun> and UnixWare have demonstrated, a large majority of the
    Arun> drivers can be made to work.

    Arun> See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/udi.html on what happens
    Arun> when people try to come up with new standards for
    Arun> interoperability. If the GNU project was as big as it is
    Arun> today when POSIX was standardized, I'm sure they would've
    Arun> said - oh! we don't want POSIX, because it helps Microsoft
    Arun> implement it on NT and use GNU/Linux software.

    Arun> I've had enough of this.

    Arun> 	-Arun