Fedora Desktop future- RedHat moves

[Les Mikesell]

Francis Earl wrote:
> 
>> An interface is agnostic to what is on the other side, which is the 
>> point of it being an interface.   And going out of your way to not work 
>> with certain others is anticompetitive behavior.
> 
> You don't seem to get it, GNU was founded on certain beliefs, and just
> because those beliefs are now entering the mainstream does NOT mean
> RedHat and other strong believers should reverse their decisions.

It's not a matter of 'getting it'.  The mechanism used to enforce the 
beliefs are counterproductive to the goals.  RedHat, of course has a 
huge vested interest in keeping others from being able to add 
improvements that they can't also automatically obtain but that's not my 
point here.

> Take a look at http://www.linux-foundation.org/en/Members to see how
> anti-competitive Linux is in the tech industry. Anyone that wants in can
> contribute and have a say in the direction of it... No one owns Linux,
> all you have to do is play by the rules.

But you can't include content already under different restrictions. 
There's a lot of that content - some with no legal alternative 
replacements possible.

>> You can't choose to cater/not cater.  You either present a usable 
>> interface and give the user the freedom to decide what to put on the 
>> other side, or you don't.  The rest is just side effects.
> 
> I'll remind you it's ILLEGAL to have non-free code link against GPL
> code.

Yes, and that keeps GPL'd code from being used at all in many situations 
which is the part I consider counterproductive.  The way to oppose 
overpriced proprietary software is to make usable replacements for as 
much of it as possible - which necessarily involves using it with code 
under different restrictions for as long as there are no free 
alternatives.  Instead, the license forces users to continue to use all 
non-free code since they can't be mixed.

> The price you pay for that is that you get drivers a little late,


No, code covered by copyright can be replaced by alternative versions, 
although in the driver case it is generally written by someone with less 
incentive to make it work than what the vendor would provide.  However, 
in any location where software patents are recognized you can't have any 
algorithm covered by a patent until it expires or someone buys it and 
releases it for free redistribution.

The scary part here is that no one really knows how much software is 
patented, or how broadly the claims might be interpreted.  Even if we 
accept on faith that no one has intentionally duplicated any patented 
techniques into Linux, there's no reason to think that they haven't 
gotten there by accident as a matter of duplicating needed functionality.

> oh well. Windows users have been perfectly fine using a system that
> doesn't even support their hardware out of the box.

Windows doesn't change its driver interface on a monthly basis, so users 
have no problem getting and installing a vendor-provided driver that 
normally continues to work for the life of their machine.  That scheme 
is not a problem.

> No one is suing ATI
> or Nvidia, but they are some of companies not abiding by the rules.

If their software uses components already under different restrictions 
they can't possibly abide by the law while releasing under GPL terms.

> DRI
> is working as fast as they can though to create a good story despite
> that. 

Video drivers are a tiny part of this problem.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com