From: "Tim" <ignored_mailbox@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
On Wed, 2006-06-14 at 13:13 -0700, BRUCE STANLEY wrote:
Hardware vendors are not going to develop full functioning drivers
and then release them to the open source community if this gives their
competitors an insight as to how to compete against them.
If you really believe that licensing terms prevents a competitor from
grabbing their product, diagnosing it, then using whatever they think in
it is a good idea, you're deluding yourself.
All sorts of industries do that (rip a competitors product apart to see
what makes it tick). Licensing makes it harder for them to directly
steal and use things. If they can get caught, they can get held to the
license terms. But with or without a license, they can manage to make
use of what information they glean, they've just got to be careful about
how they use it.
It does not seem to stop most open source users. The discussion that
Gene started regarding playing WMV files is a case in point. I believe
anything which plays these files on Linux is illegal to use in the US
even if the reverse engineering was legal where it was done.
GPL is good until it's your ox getting gored. It seems Sean may be
one of the more honest fellows about it. I must give him credit for
that much. He puts his actions where his mouth is. I still don't
agree with his apparent politics.
{^_-}
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