____/ Mark Kent on Tuesday 28 August 2007 10:18 : \____
> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>> ____/ Mark Kent on Friday 24 August 2007 18:56 : \____
>>
>>> [H]omer <spam@xxxxxxx> espoused:
>>>> Verily I say unto thee, that Roy Schestowitz spake thusly:
>>>>
>>>>> | Linus: I actually don't worry about MS at all.
>>>>
>>>> Why should he? After all he "likes Tivoisation", so the prospect of
>>>> Microsoft turning GNU/Linux into just another proprietary blob of
>>>> Microsoft patented code shouldn't bother him at all. They're just
>>>> "sharing" his code then "giving" it back, aren't they? So OK, what
>>>> they're "giving back" is toxic waste designed to poison the Free
>>>> Software community, but hey ... that's just nit-picking.
>>>>
>>>
>>> There's also this:
>>>
>>> " Linus: I don't really have a hugely strong opinion on it. Business is
>>> business, and I don't get involved with it; "
>>>
>>> And yet, what could be more critical to business than the patent threat,
>>> and the need for GPLv3, and the elimination of binary drivers as a
>>> lock-in mechanism? The problem I have with the above statement is that
>>> he clearly /does/ get involved, very frequently, and very deeply, and
>>> yet often lacks the kind of experiences myself and others have had, so
>>> fails to recognise what business actually needs. At least, the
>>> customers, anyway. From a vendor perspective, binary drivers are a
>>> great lock-in enabler.
>>
>> I have been thinking about it recently. What Linus does is, on one level,
>> brilliant. He is very focused on ensuring that he keeps kernel stuff in
>> mind. He doesn't want to be distracted, so he leaves the 'politics' to
>> others. The problem with that is that he /TOTALLY/ fails to understand what
>> Microsoft is up to (Mark Shuttleworth, on the other hand, knows it all too
>> well), so he makes licence choice with only technical issues (e.g. TiVo) in
>> mind.
>>
>
> Of course, the GPL was always a political issue, so you can't really
> make licence choices without considering the politics. Naive people
> always like to think that they can be separated, like sport and
> politics. They can't.
In an idea world they could. But look what Microsoft does to OOXML debates,
which ought to have been technical. It was long ago that people around the
world, some of whom I know, accused Microsoft of turning the whole thing into
politics. As OOXML is very weak on technical grounds, making non-technical
people concentrate on politics is much easier. Later on, the corruption came
as well.
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | Proprietary cripples communication
http://Schestowitz.com | Free as in Free Beer | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Cpu(s): 27.5%us, 4.9%sy, 1.0%ni, 61.8%id, 4.4%wa, 0.3%hi, 0.2%si, 0.0%st
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