Verily I say unto thee, that chrisv spake thusly:
> How would chasing Tivo away from OSS benefit the world?
By ensuring that those who modify and use Free Software can continue to
modify and use it as it, as the GPL intended.
As for those /outside/ that circle of interest (i.e. the /rest/ of the
world), Free Software advocates should be as concerned about others'
selfish interests, as those others are about the principles of Free
Software, which is to say - not at all ... beyond trying to convince
those people to embrace such principles.
You might just as well ask "how would defeating fascism benefit the
world?" Defeating the detractors of freedom most certainly /does/
benefit the world, and Tivo is one such detractor.
If the "benefit" you are looking for is "market share" or "money" ... or
even "proprietary features", then there are far easier and more
immediate ways of obtaining that gratification, without compromising
Free Software. Indeed, it has been shown time and again (for those who
care about that sort of thing) that obtaining market share and even
making profits is not mutually exclusive to the principles of Free
Software, even when those principles are properly implemented (unlike Tivo).
As for proprietary features, I would argue that the freedom of the GPL
is the best "feature" that any software could have, provided that
freedom is upheld. Almost every given application of technology has a
Free Software or Open Format equivalent anyway, so it's not like you're
deprived of choice.
But there will always be those who prefer the "proprietary" paradigm,
for some unfathomable reason. Fine ... let them use proprietary software
and formats. They /also/ have plenty of choices, without resorting to
perverting others' Free Software for their own selfish ends.
--
K.
http://slated.org
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| "[Microsoft] are willing to lose money for years and years just to
| make sure that you don't make any money, either." - Bob Cringely.
| - http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2007/07/cringely-the-un.html
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Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.23.8-63.fc8
21:21:41 up 34 days, 18:57, 4 users, load average: 0.04, 0.08, 0.04
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