B.Weber@warwick.ac.uk schrieb:
If you accept the pine licence as open source then windows is nearly open source, after all the kernel source code is available to partners and some academic institutions etc, but those with the source code would not be able to redistribute modified versions.
Come on, *everybody* can see the source of pine, that is the meaning of "open source". You are talking about developper's need to fork (that's what pine doesn't allow). Windows is a completeley different thing.
distribution. The last decisions with regard to proprietary drivers and now the movement of pine to CD6 seem to show, that SUSE is not the most user-friendly distribution anymore, but the "OSI definition", "GPL rulez", "kernel policy forever" shouting developpers baby.
Many might not wish to sacrifice the freedoms afforded by the GPL for greater ease of use, after all many consider windows to be easy to use but it is not Free software.
This is no discussion about Windows, but about SUSE Linux. Is its goal user-friendliness or OSI-friendliness?
As for the kernel module issue this is slightly different as the kernel is GPLed and binary kernel modules become part of the same program by the FSF's definition and hence must be GPLed or violate the developer's copyright.
I know all the legal discussions, however this is not LKML, but the SUSE list. I would hardly accept, that there should be user shortcomings for the sake of kernel policies, but i can very well understand the SUSE view of a maintaining nightmare for all modules, which are not supported by the kernel people anymore. Ciao Siegbert