On Tue, 14 Nov 2006, John Andersen wrote:
On Tuesday 14 November 2006 15:25, Boyd Lynn Gerber wrote:
I am a bit a shamed at the way the OSS community is/has been acting.
I'm not sure its your place to be ashamed of the community. The community is looking out for itself and the GPL
Do you really think the old SUSE troops would allow it? I would be willing to bet that should Novell be dumb enough to make such a mistake, (which I really doubt) a law suit would be filed with-in 24 hours. Something like that could not go un-noticed. With all the griping,... I would give dieing in a plane crash better odds of happening. Novel has dine some really dumb things but the chance of a GPL violation I think is not even possible.
Nobody objects to Novell getting money from Microsoft, and nobody cares about Novell giving money to Microsoft except for the rabid few who would Nuke Redmond if they thought they could get away with it.
Do you really think that? It is the money possibly going to MS that is fueling all this. The rabid MS is evil and anything from MS or NDIH (Not Done I Here--OSS) is evil.
What people DO care about is the GPL and a few notable folks in the FOSS community think this agreement is not in compliance with or designed to undermine the GPL and FOSS in general.
I like the GPL 2, but I really disagree with some of the GPL 3 as it currently stands. What about the LGPL is it a total blaspenme? The LGPL allows commercial use, it has to be totally evil? Right? What about the BSD licences evil? Right? It all come back to sharing and money!
Novells promise of money to Microsoft based on the SALES OF FOSS software, while at the same time declaring that there is no infringements in Suse is confusing at best, disingenuous, and possibly in direct violation of the GPL.
What FOSS sales? They are for Sales of SLES or SLED? What is wrong with paying for leads/Support contracts? AH that is illegal or evil? Right? You can not make money for support! Right? You are not allowed to pay someone for selling your product? Right? How many retailers would or people would give away HW/SW? You should not have to pay for anything!
That's what the debate is about. Not making money. Until these issues are settled openly and publicly you can expect a certain amount of discontent.
Right it is not about the money that may be paid to MS? Novell and all
the developers are really dumb and will violate the GPL! Sure we need to
be cautious? But really, with all the GPL watch dogs? Novell will pull
the wool over our eyes and violate everything! Sorry but I really can not
see any of the developers loosing their basic philossiphy(BAD SP).
/Sarcasim on
So let's see what happens, after all the sun is going to explode tomorrow
and will all be dead by a plane crash! Just about as likely!
Sarcasim off/
--
Boyd Gerber