Francis Earl wrote:
And because the GPL provides the anti-competitive means to keep others
from improving the product in ways you might like better without them
being able to offer it too.
How is it anti-competitive to ensure in legal terms that everyone plays
nicely with each other? Please let me know.
It is the same as if Microsoft claimed that everything that linked to
any of their libraries belonged to them or could only be distributed on
their terms, even if the recipient already had their own copy of the
library itself.
GPL is designed to EMPOWER users, to give the control BACK to the user.
You should read the GNU Manifesto some time.
Technically, users are permitted to do anything they want - the
restrictions apply only to redistribution. However, most people don't
want to write all of their own code or couldn't even if they tried, so
for all practical purposes, the GPL simply limits what you can get.
They can give the software to their friend, instill it on as many
machines as they want - these are both things that effect EVERYONE. The
other rights ensure longevity of the code, and extensive peer review,
which betters the quality of the code... again, benefiting everyone.
I agree with the benefits which is why it is a shame that the code can't
be used at all in many situations which require features under different
restrictions.
Use the livna repo if you do not care about such restrictions.
I do care about the legal issues and they aren't going to go away.
So what exactly are you arguing about? RedHat is attempting to change
the way the IT industry works to empower YOU, to give YOU control and
choice, and keep the corporations honest.
By not advocating Linux on the desktop? That's realistic, but I don't
see how it accomplishes any of the things you are saying. To the extent
that RedHat is accumulating patents that they release for free
distribution they are on the right track, but they aren't ever going to
own them all.
In the Linux space, you just switch distro.
For what
it's worth, a Tivo is a Linux box.
And part of the reason for GPLv3 was to make such things more difficult.
The FSF isn't doing you any favors.
They wanted to ensure a strategy Tivo partook in didn't happen again,
Which is horrible. Tivo is a good thing. More things like that would be
a good thing.
Tivo tried to steal code from people that didn't want it used that way.
Tivo didn't steal any code from anyone. You can still get the same code.
It was a legal loophole so they can benefit solely, that isn't ok in the
FOSS world...
They designed hardware to use the code. There's nothing wrong with that.
If I stole your credit cards, transferred the money to my account, and
gave the card back, you wouldn't feel too good about that, would you?
How does taking away money relate to anything? Using code available to
everyone takes away nothing.
How about if I justified it saying "you can still use the card", would
that make it ok?
No, code is money.
But using another copy of it does not take anything away that was there
before. Try another scenario that doesn't take anything away to see if
you can understand the real situation.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
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