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SubjectRe: UDI and Politics (was Re: Linux, UDI and SCO.)
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In message <36049D10.BED398@tbcnet.com>, Terry L Ridder writes:
+-----
| It seems that all of the known Project UDI with the exception of IBM
| are also backers of I2O. What is even more interesting is that Adaptec,
+--->8

IBM's enough of an I2O backer that, at a time when they were reassigning
their OS/2 developers to Java and NT development, they still wrote OS/2 I2O
drivers.

| With this new information, I do believe we the Linux Community have
| found the "currency of trade". Project UDI has clearly stated that
| they want/need the Linux Community helps. The price will be the
| following:
|
| I2O becomes totally open, just like Project UDI, in fact I2O
| would use the following to indicate this:
+--->8

No argument, as far as it goes. But UDI's definition of "totally open"
doesn't quite go far enough --- I'd like to see a requirement of at least
LGPL on UDI (yes, and I2O) drivers so that we can avoid the potential for
lock-in to binary-only drivers. Not that I expect to see it, but I would
consider a GPL requirement to be an initial bargaining position.

Unfortunately, I find it more likely that the response will be "if you
implement UDI then you can run our binary-only x86-PC UDI I2O drivers, isn't
that good enough?". To which our answer is and must be "no" --- if only
because x86-PC I2O drivers are useless on PPC, SPARC, Alpha, MIPS, ... which
argument they might understand even if they don't have a clue about *why*
free software/open source, which I'm sure they don't or I2O wouldn't be an
issue.

| That I suggest is the price for our help.
| If Project UDI does not like the price, we do as Alan has suggested,
| ignore them.
+--->8

No argument here. Especially given Kevin Quick's statements which relegate
us to being a source of free driver development labor; they betray a
fundamental misunderstanding of the basis of the free software/open source
community's economic basis. (Not that anyone's sure what that basis is, but
we have a pretty good idea of what it's *not* --- and it's not what Quick's
statements assume it is.)

--
brandon s. allbery [os/2][linux][solaris][japh] allbery@kf8nh.apk.net
system administrator [WAY too many hats] allbery@ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering KF8NH
carnegie mellon university



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