On Wednesday 31 May 2006 04:19, T. Ribbrock wrote:
Hopefully linux doesn't die a slow death due to its success. I am reminded of the saying: "the operation was a success (removal of non-gpl code) but the patient died (linux)".
My take is different: "...the patient *almost* died, but it was the only way to survive at all". In these days of suing the pants off anyone who even resembles coming close to some odd patent that is hiding somewhere, I think the only way to make Linux' survival safe is to avoid all that non-open crap.
All well and good... take the high road. But tell me where the hardware support is going to come from?? Even OS/2 had a hard time with getting devices supported in its day and it had the weight of IBM behind it and they did a lot of the work. I really think this removal of non-GPL stuff and the idea that nothing is going to taint the kernel is going to be the beginning of a downslide for linux. Do they expect vendors to open all their code and give away their proprietary specs just to keep the kernel developers happy? If they aren't even writing device support now, why would they want to start with those rules in place?