Les Mikesell wrote:
Andy Green wrote:
This problem: ''It's Linux that brings a problem into this picture.''
Mentioned after your noting that Dells ship with MP3 and WMA and "It's
Linux that brings a problem into this picture.". The reason Linux
distros don't ship with that support is patents. I hope that clears
up your sudden attack of 'confusion'.
No, it doesn't clear it up, given that other operating systems are able
to arrange distribution with patented components. I'm not insisting
that this combination be free, just available.
For Microsoft, it's paid-for and the whole thing is not redistributable.
For Linspire solutions for Linux, the OS is redistributable but not
the MP3 part. Fedora's basis is that it is contains freely
redistributable stuff, and indeed I find being able to copy it around at
will is important.
you are willing to meet the licensing terms of all the components you
want to have, no one is allowed to combine them for you if any part
is covered by the GPL and any other part has different restrictions.
These are completely separate areas in law. The GPL operates under
Copyright law. But the work you have fully legitimate copyright to
can easily violate dozens of patents, which is regulated by a
completely separate body of patent law. Let's imagine your enduser
view of the GPL making problems was solved. Say the GPL became BSD
overnight. Still Redhat cannot bundle mp3 players due to patent law.
They would no longer be constrained by licensing to not add components
with different redistribution restrictions. So they could bundle
anything they want as long as the license requirements were met
independently.
You mean: "Copyright licensing". Patentholders typically did it to make
money, and won't license their patents for free usage unless there is a
quid pro quo in the form of a patent crosslicense. So Fedora could not
go on as it is even in that hypothetical situation where copyright
licensing restrictions disappeared but it wanted to include patented
software: it would have to charge like all the other solutions currently
have to charge.
I have to say I noted the irony of your using Alan Cox's code in the
networking stack to piss him off. Seems your complaints should be
tempered by some recognition that a lot of work went into giving us
this stuff for free. Without acknowledging the debt, your complaints
sound like a teenager complaining about how unfair his life is, while
he lives under a roof he doesn't have to pay for, eats food, wears
clothes that are given to him.
Is there something unique about the linux kernel that should matter to
me? It is a convenient place to run X, apache, sendmail, perl, nfs,
java, firefox, openoffice, etc. and I use it because it has hijacked
much driver and kernel development that might have gone into the *bsd's
otherwise. But I'll turn your comment around and point out that Linux
But your complaints centre on Linux and the GPL.
wouldn't exist without the design and specification of the original
proprietary version of unix, and those other applications wouldn't exist
without their original proprietary host OS's and in many cases their own
proprietary versions. If you are going to pay homage to the development
You should turn it around a little further: Linux wouldn't exist as it
is without the GPL, because the same set of contributors and the same
ecosystem would not have formed. When you compose your complaints about
the downstream effects of the GPL limiting what can be bundled, you
should consider effect #0: it gave you the thing in the first place.
cycle, you should point out the irony of the self-serving GPL exception
allowing linkage with proprietary libraries of operating systems that it
happens to need to run and initially couldn't have existed without, yet
denying distribution with other binary-only components. What's that
about acknowledging debt? Meanwhile I still buy copies of Windows and
OS X for my machines because Linux distributions don't (and perhaps
can't ever) include components to do all of the equivalent things.
People did a lot of work and gave you the result for free so you would
have something to complain about. That is what should be acknowledged.
It doesn't mean falling to your knees and weeping. But instead of
acknowledging it, which should be easy enough since the evidence is all
around you, you find yourself reaching into the GPL and picking out a
specific feature of the license to complain about in response
instead[1]. Your point is that this license feature means they didn't
do all that work and give it to you for free? No, it means you have a
problem acknowledging that you are the recipient of their kindness,
because doing so puts the complaints in a different, more holistic light.
I have to use XP in vmware for one program myself, it doesn't invalidate
the great work in Linux that works in every other area of my computer
use, in fact having to go in there reminds me how great it all is. Use
Linux where it makes sense and does a good job, by all means use other
stuff when you have to. Don't try to bend Linux and Fedora out of the
shape of what they are to fit all cases.
How is this going to change? I expect encodings to continue to
improve and for people to continue to need a way to fund the
development work. The GPL just doesn't provide a good model to fairly
share those costs and it doesn't co-exist well with the schemes that do.
Yeah that's actually right IMO. About a year ago I had the same
argument with ESR. Proprietary software -- proprietary in the
copyright sense -- is given meaning and a lease of life by proprietary
codecs -- proprietary in the patent sense. The two are symbiotic
because they can share revenue. The FOSS "niche" is everywhere else.
Because of great patent-free codecs like Matroska and Vorbis we are
not locked out of participating in audio and video, but the content
rightsholders, by their choice of patent-protected codings, can and
will lock us out of being able to offer their content.
Yes, content is what matters, so those codecs become important when/if
the content you want is available in that encoding. Until the content
vendors give up on DRM by finding out it doesn't sell, that's probably
not going to happen.
Yeah, although there are signs EMI in financial desperation may be
preparing to push the MP3 button, not that it helps us much as we
discussed. The best answer is not to buy content that is restrictively
licensed. http://jamendo.com will work with Fedora out of the box, with
CC licensed music in OGG Vorbis format. If you encourage that stuff
with your money instead you are doing something to reward people for
being open and trusting and punishing the closed people that will jump
at the chance to sue you.
And despite ESR's naive hopes of getting rescued by Linspire, there is
nothing that can be done about it from this side going on. And who to
blame? Patent law.
I agree that we'd be better off if software were recognized as math and
not eligible for patents, but the mere existence of a patent doesn't
mean that the terms of licensing have to be unreasonable or that the
license can't be arranged and aggregated by a distributor. However
vendor-provided binary drivers are a more immediate issue relating
specifically to Linux. The mp3 discussion was just a sidetrack since
it's all application level and can be done without inheriting any GPL
restrictions.
In practice it does typically mean that unless the patent is used in
crosslicensing horsetrading, it won't be granted in a redistributable
way for $0: because then why bother with a patent. So patents
inherently stand against free and freely redistributable software like
Fedora, GPL or no GPL. The content rightsholders that will leverage
that by patented codec choice stand against it too: why reward that with
your money.
-Andy
[1] Have you met my ex-?
