Fedora's way forward

[Alan Cox]

On Tue, Mar 28, 2006 at 11:32:15AM -0500, Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> The page says $50K one time flat fee for a decoder.  Is there any good
> reason Red Hat shouldn't simply buy that license for some outfit with
> a track record, like the lame developers?  MP3 problem solved,
> relatively cheaply (e.g., less than half the annual cost ofjust one
> additional full-time coder).

Because that license only covers a single seller of decoders selling a single
product in a proprietary manner. The GPL sensibly prohibits such sellouts. The
price they want for an 'all GPL use' license will probably be a little bit
higher probably hundreds of times higher

> the central question here: do we want ideological purity at the expense of 
> victory, or do we want actual victory so that *we* get to effectively set
> the terms of software development in the future?

Learn from history Eric. Unless you are careful to keep your beliefs and
ethics intact you become what you fight, whether its the USA versus the USSR
or free software versus proprietary.

Alan