lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2003]   [Jan]   [4]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
    /
    Date
    From
    SubjectRe: Why is Nvidia given GPL'd code to use in closed source drivers?
    On Sat, Jan 04, 2003 at 11:06:51PM +0100, Matthias Andree wrote:
    > It's useful to have people around that think in other directions, they
    > make up for innovation. Linux is an offspring of such people's thoughts.

    Linux is a copy of Unix. There is very little new stuff in Linux.
    All of the innovation is built on top of a copy of a commercial work.

    To date, nothing remotely as influential as Unix has come out of the
    open source community. Sure, there are a ton of copies of existing work,
    that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about new things. I keep
    coming back to this because some of you refuse to get it. It costs A LOT
    OF MONEY TO MAKE NEW STUFF. Because we are stupid, we all make a lot of
    mistakes, we throw away those mistakes. The free software model doesn't
    generate 1/1000th of the money it would take to make progress continue
    at its current rate in the software world. Don't believe me? Cool.
    Go start a company, GPL your work, get back to me in 5 years and show
    me how well it worked.

    Other than distributions, where are those free software success stories?
    Oh, yes, Cygnus. They were doing about $25M/year or so when redhat bought
    them. Whoopee. And Red Hat, *with* Cygnus, is doing all of $80M/year.
    And we all agree that they are the leader in the free software financial
    success stories, right? Who's bigger? IBM? Let's see, spent $1B and
    by their own statements "almost have made that back". Hmm, running at
    a loss but going to make it up on volume.

    Now let's compare to some closed source companies:

    Company Factor more revenue than Red Hat
    Microsoft 370
    Oracle 116
    Sun 150

    You get the idea. Sun makes more in 2 days than Red Hat makes all year.
    It doesn't even take Microsoft a whole day to make what Red Hat makes in
    a year.

    > This is exaggerated, but it might help stepping back and looking at the
    > WHOLE system.

    Indeed. Look over your shoulder. That's me, stepped way farther back than you.
    --
    ---
    Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm
    -
    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/

    \
     
     \ /
      Last update: 2005-03-22 13:32    [W:3.485 / U:0.036 seconds]
    ©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site