Fedora philosophy (was ATI video comes out of the closet)

[Craig White]

On Sat, 2007-09-08 at 21:16 -0400, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> On Sat, 2007-09-08 at 16:09 -0700, Craig White wrote:
> > On Sat, 2007-09-08 at 17:12 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> > > There is such a fundamental problem in general, in that the GPL 
> > > restrictions prevent many useful combinations of things from being 
> > > distributed even when all parties would like to give them away.  However 
> > > in this case the specific problem is the lack of a stable and specified 
> > > interface so a device driver can independently provide services for the 
> > > kernel without either being considered a derivative or needing to 
> > > revised every time the kernel is rebuilt.
> > ----
> > not really a problem for software where the source is available and much
> > more of a problem for software that is distributed as binary only.
> 
> Oh, but it *is* a problem, even for open source.  I work on a project
> licensed under the CPL.  That's open source too, but I can't distribute
> prebuilt binaries of versions that link with GPL utility routines such
> as getline().
> 
> You might suggest that I choose a different license, but it's not up to
> me.
> 
> The really silly thing is, even the FSF doesn't think there's a major
> philosophical difference.  The CPL has some restrictions regarding
> patent licensing that the GPL doesn't.  The FSF description of the
> incompatibility states that they don't think those restrictions are a
> bad idea, but the do induce incompatibility.
----
silly thing? surely not to those who have chosen this CPL license (and
I'm not familiar with it).

there is obviously intent by the developers when they choose a
particular license. Then of course, there are stories such as this which
are clearly upsetting...
http://ask.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?id=270361&op=view

I think that the objectives for the GPL license and well known and have
been for quite some time.

Craig