Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: UDI and Politics (was Re: Linux, UDI and SCO.) | Date | Sun, 20 Sep 1998 09:48:14 -0300 | From | "Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH" <> |
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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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