lkml.org 
[lkml]   [2003]   [Jan]   [5]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
    /
    From
    SubjectRe: Why is Nvidia given GPL'd code to use in closed source drivers?
    Date
        Linux is a copy of Unix.  There is very little new stuff in Linux.

    This is no coincidence. GNU/Linux parallels Unix because I chose that
    design in 1983. It is foolish to focus on innovation when you are
    starting a race with a multi-year handicap. The first task is to
    catch up.

    The primary purpose of GNU is the freedom to cooperate. Innovation is
    nice, but secondary. We followed the design of Unix because that was
    the most reliable way to produce a working portable system. We made
    it compatible with Unix so that many users could easily switch to it.
    We deliberately avoided innovative approaches in many cases--the
    noteworthy exception being the GNU Hurd. (Perhaps that exception was
    a bad decision.)

    Although innovation is not our primary focus, there is a fair amount
    of innovation in GNU packages. GNU Emacs is better than any previous
    Emacs. (The first Emacs was another innovation in our community.)
    GCC was the first portable truly optimizing compiler, and the first
    optimizing compiler that supported debugging. Autoconf was an
    innovation in portability technology. Looking elsewhere in our
    community, Perl and Python seem to be innovative; the X Window System
    was too. There are surely more examples that I don't know of.

    You get the idea. Sun makes more in 2 days than Red Hat makes all year.

    This is very significant if money is your main goal. Both GNU and
    Linux exist because of people who have different priorities.

    -
    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:4.109 / U:0.024 seconds]
    ©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site