Re: Tools

[Rich Bodo]

Getting a little philosophical here...

> 2. POSSL (to my knowledge) requires non-free software to be used.

Number two sounds like a good reason not to use POSSL, but number three
sounds to me like a good reason *to* use POSSL.

> 3. POSSL is under a copyright holder that has strong commercial
> interests.

The leadership of GNU may be committed to doing what they think is
good, but that should not be relied on indefinitely and
unquestioningly.  Either rely on yourself to do what is right, or let
others do your thinking for you.  Leadership changes, people change.
Organizations agreeable to you today may not be tomorrow.  Happens
with governments all the time.  If you don't agree with the ideals of
a copyright holder of a GPL project, fork it or leave it.  If you do,
work with them.

>
> These things are important.  Under the current scenario, I would ask why
> did Linus Torvalds create GNU/Linux?  He could have obtained a
> proprietary kernel and installed the GNU system on top of it and had a
> working system?

At the Computer History museum several months ago, Linus explained
this.  He created the first half of it because he was interested, and
finished it because his modem overwrote his hard drive.  He was using
a non-proprietary kernel prior to that, minix, which is what he based
Linux on.  So, primarily, interest.  It was just fun.  A very good
reason to write it, IMHO.  I'm sure he has greatly enjoyed his
position in the Linux kernel project, and would not abandon it for
another project just because it was superior or made a larger system
more complete.

-Rich