Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 11 Mar 2006 13:07:09 +0100 | From | DervishD <> | Subject | Re: [future of drivers?] a proposal for binary drivers. |
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Hi David :)
* David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> dixit: > > I don't want my work used by a corporation without giving any > > modification under the same conditions under I published my work. > > Binary driver can and will do harm if allowed. > > If you want to restrict *use* you need an EULA, shrink wrap agreement, > click-through or signed contract. If you give away copies of your work with > no conditions on the *receipt* of the work, you lose the right to control > how the work is used. Otherwise, someone could drop a million copies of > their poem from an airplane and then sue everyone who read it.
Sorry, I meant "make a derivative work and distribute it" when I wrote "used by a corporation without giving any modification...". My english is very poor sometimes O:)
I was referring to the fact that if I use GPL is because I don't want anyone using my work to produce new work and distribute it without distributing the modification, too. In the kernel case, a binary driver uses work made by others without giving anything back (and not, I don't consider the driver itself enough "giving back"), at least that's how I see it.
If binary drivers are allowed, soon we will have only drivers for a couple of distros (I don't use a distro, so I'm lost) and they will be unmaintained as soon as new hardware is released. I have had that problem in Windows with hardware that is only three years old, hardware that I can use in Linux without problem (my Linux box is 5 years old on the average, but my graphics card was manufactured in 1998 IIRC). In MS-DOS, binary drivers were an issue because they were abandoned as soon as Windows-95 was released, but the worst thing is that a good bunch of GOOD hardware will work ONLY with the latest release of WinXP. I don't want that to happen in Linux. And if I have the sources, I have a chance of fixing bugs or whatever.
I know copyright won't help in that issue, but licensing can, and I think that the kernel is doing the right thing.
Raúl Núñez de Arenas Coronado
-- Linux Registered User 88736 | http://www.dervishd.net http://www.pleyades.net & http://www.gotesdelluna.net It's my PC and I'll cry if I want to... RAmen! - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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