Fedora - DELL ?

[Les Mikesell]

Ric Moore wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-03-15 at 15:26 +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
>>> I would like some clarification. Is the above what the whole dispute is about? 
>>> A warning message? 
>> I didn't think it was a dispute just someone sounding off. But yes all we
>> do to "enforce" the module licensing for general usage symbols exported
>> with EXPORT_SYMBOL() is provide a taint warning. For deep internal
>> symbols a kernel module must be GPL or GPL compatibly licensed.
> 
> That sounds perfectly logical to me, as you cannot warranty nor have
> responsibility for something you didn't or can't code or modify. RH IS a
> commercial product. No doubt about it and they are completely up-front
> about it and always have been. It would be a disservice to their
> customer base to ship a pristine product with a handful of potential
> garbage tossed in. It would be dumber-than-hell. So, where's the beef?
> Just think liability. Think insurance costs. Think CFO. There isn't
> anything in the world that would convince a really good CFO to allow his
> company to ship something that might prove to be a financial liability
> in this sue-happy world we live in. Give it up, and get real guys.

I think you've pretty much described the way windows works.  Do you 
really think Microsoft's CFO has a big problem compared to RedHat's?

> I betcha Dell has a CFO too. And, I bet they don't ship something with
> mp3 playback loaded and ready to use in it, as shipped. Wait and see
> what happens. :) Ric

Did you happen to not notice that virtually every Dell currently shipped 
has mp3 playback loaded - also WMA and most would have dvd too.  It's 
Linux that brings a problem into this picture.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com