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Jeremy Allison Talks Samba and GPLv3
dmarti writes "The software that enables Linux to act as a Windows file and print server is adopting the Free Software Foundation's new license. What will be the impact on users, distributors, and appliance vendors? Samba maintainer Jeremy Allison answers, in a podcast interview."
Hmm, the FSF is not a church. It is not a gospel. It is not a faith. It is just a bunch of people who think that the best way to spread computer knowledge for the betterment of mankind is to turn software into a free commodity. You are free to do otherwise. Just write your own software then. Don't leach off other people's charity work for your profit. A good example is Tivo. Tivo can do whatever they want, provided that they write their own software and don't leach off GPL software. Tivo can either free up their code the way the GPL intends, or they can rewrite their system using Microsoft Windows, or VxWorks, Or Sun Solaris. It is their choice. That is all that the FSF and the GPL is about.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
To Linus it's just a software license. To RMS and the rest of us who believe in Free Software, it's the legal embodiment of a philosophy. My only hope for the future is that people who don't care about the philosophy stick with GPLv2 and those that do, switch to GPLv3.
How we know is more important than what we know.
There exist no such thing as an "appliance computer". THe Tivo is a normal computer, to which Tivo Inc. added some restrictions.