'GPL encumbrance problems'

[Andy Green]

Erwin Rol wrote:

> If you would have to rewrite Linux you would also be *poof* out of the
> market, wouldn't you ? If you would have to buy a 75 Euro WinXPe for
> your 50 Euro gadget you would be 75 Euro more expensive than the
> competition that uses Linux and you would also be *poof* out of the
> market.
> 
> What I don't really understand is how you go *poof* out of the market
> when you sell gadgets that need a open source driver ? People still
> would have to by the gadget, wouldn't they ? 

The worry is that when much of what makes the gadget innovative is tied
up in the code that must be opened, people will indeed still buy the
gadget, but perhaps not from the original author of the opened code...
lots of people with financial interests in such projects become highly
agitated and concerned when told they must give the sources with the
product, although that seems to be gradually going away as we see more
and more embedded GPL stuff and so far little or no destruction from it.
 Companies seem to be using patents to try to put a miasma of doubt on
the replication of product categories and other tricks to find comfort
even in such a situation.

But I agree, seems to me one cannot overlook the advantages that come in
with using the Open stuff... quality is actually one of the foremost
ones... eg, the Linux networking stack... being able to dig into
*everything* to find bugs, even if that is just placing printfs in some
library to help find hardware problems... time to market...

-Andy
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