They're missing some paragraphs
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| bigg Mar 30, 2007 7:05 AM EDT |
"The company certainly can't any longer after this pretend that the deal has not affected how it is viewed by the FOSS community" When did Novell make that claim? Anyway, I think they need to add a comment on the Ubuntu ShipIt program. About Novell/Microsoft, they write > The basic harm that such an agreement can do is to make the free software subject to it effectively proprietary. This result occurs to the extent that users feel compelled, by the threat of the patent, to get their copies in this way.... We take the threat seriously, and we have decided to act to block such threats, and to reduce their potential to do harm. That same logic of "users feel compelled" also applies to the ShipIt program as well. Here's the proposed wording: The basic harm such a program can do is to make the free software effectively proprietary. This result occurs to the extent that users feel compelled, by the convenience and low cost of the program, to get their copies in this way.... We take the program seriously, and we have decided to act to block such programs, and to reduce their potential to do harm. And the nightmare that is the OLPC as well: The basic harm such a program can do is to make the free software effectively proprietary. This result occurs to the extent that users feel compelled, by the convenience and low cost of the program, to get their copies in this way.... We take the program seriously, and we have decided to act to block such programs, and to reduce their potential to do harm. Thus, unless the Ubuntu ShipIt program is willing to offer the same free CD shipping for all distributions, and governments are willing to provide the choice of any distribution on the OLPC computers, they will now be in violation of the GPL. As is well known, gifts are always and everywhere a bad thing. We will be changing our name to the Equal Software Foundation, because it's a matter of all users experiencing software equality rather than software freedom. Future changes will be added to prohibit the installation of pretty icons by default, as pretty icons will compel users to adopt that particular distribution, at the expense of other distributions. |
| Sander_Marechal Mar 30, 2007 2:11 PM EDT |
> When did Novell make that claim? In various interviews. They claimed 90% support from the FOSS community since only about 10% openly spoke against it. I'm not going to comment on the rest of your post. |
| moopst Mar 31, 2007 2:44 PM EDT |
Are you saying that users are compelled to get a free Ubuntu CD because of the convenience or cost? That's hardly the same thing as patent aggression. The same could be said about my Zenwalk distro having to come all the way from France but my Slackware is mirrored here in Colorado. I don't think it's necessary (or even possible) for everyone to distribute everyone elses distro. My view is that the free cd is a particularly user friendly method of distribution for those who do not have broadband or those poor weenie-dos users whose registry has been sabotaged by Microsoft to become clueless on how to burn an .iso file. Just another distribution method. The fact that Mark Shuttleworth is willing to pay the cost plus postage is immaterial. |
| bigg Apr 02, 2007 6:46 AM EDT |
> Are you saying that users are compelled to get a free Ubuntu CD because of the convenience or cost? Are you saying users are compelled to use Novell's offerings because of the patent deal? > That's hardly the same thing as patent aggression. No kidding. Patent aggression is worse than the cost of downloading and burning a CD. That's what's so puzzling about the revised GPL and the comments that were made afterward. I can't understand why they wrote patent aggression into the GPL. It would make sense to me if they had prohibited patent aggression. What would be unacceptable behavior would be Novell paying Microsoft to sue Red Hat customers. Instead they rewrote the GPL to make it a violation of the license to reduce the probability of a patent lawsuit. The companies that actually have the resources to fight a company like Microsoft are now prohibited from protecting anyone else. Apparently some must view patent aggression as a good thing to write GPLv3 as they have. To be honest, I know why it has been written like this. What they really want is to write a clause that says "You are prohibited from distributing GPL software if you make any kind of agreement at all with Microsoft." It's obvious to everyone that a statement like that would be so silly as to make the GPL irrelevant. So as a compromise, they were willing to accept patent aggression in return for getting rid of some deals with Microsoft. I'm also concerned that this sets an ugly precedent. The GPL's current language is not important because the language can be changed anytime you get on the wrong side of Richard Stallman. I'm sure businesses will be lining up to adopt the GPL. At least if they write their own license they can control what goes into it. This should do wonders for anyone hoping to see open drivers. "You have a video card that only supports Windows? We'll change the GPL again so that you either provide open drivers for all hardware or no hardware!" |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!