On Sat, 2008-09-20 at 09:42 -0500, Bruno Wolff III wrote: > On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 09:59:49 -0400, > Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams <ivazqueznet@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > 2) Intellectual "Property" issues > > > > Hardware vendors don't want other hardware vendors to know how they run > > their hardware so that their design can't be copied or stolen. > > You mean that hardware vendors don't want their competitors to see how they > are doing things because they may be violating one of their competitors' > patents and having the source out their makes it easier for their competitors > to see this. Maybe for ASICs, but for all the firmware for ARM and MIPS processors, where it is easy to disassemble the code, this line of reasoning really does not hold. It is as easy for a competitor to disassemble and see what's going on than it is for anyone else. In these cases holding the source has nothing to do with preventing competition from hardware makers. Except, maybe, as a way to delay competitors. But if this is the point then a delayed release of the source (1 year later) would work as well, by the time you release it, you are probably already working on the next generation and you do not loose much. It might be a way to respect/fool regulations as in the radio transmission case, but in all other cases I think there are ample margins to teach the benefit of openness and push these people to release the source in whatever form it is as soon as possible. Simo. -- Simo Sorce * Red Hat, Inc * New York -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
