Re: Tools

[Derek Neighbors]

On Sat, 2002-10-19 at 16:36, Rich Bodo wrote:

> > 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.

We can agree to disagree. Strong commercial interests means no sense of
community.  (read they will screw you at first chance they have to make
money)  Generally corporations like this put out 'dead' product to hope
some one carries it, or they hope to attract folks to get them 'buy'
something they need that is not free.  (i.e. bait them)

I cant speak for motivations here, not saying they have any, but on the
whole it appears that they fit the mold of those before them that have
operated this way.

Certainly one could take the code and make a fork and avoid many of the
worries, but that just isnt playing nice either.

> > 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.

My point was completely missed.  He created Linux for a large part
because there wasnt a good non-propreitary unix kernel for the x86
architecture that was available to really study, modify and toy with.

I _never_ meant to imply he did FOR freedom/ideology sake.

 
-- 
Derek Neighbors
GNU Enterprise
http://www.gnuenterprise.org
address@hidden

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