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How Hardware Makers Come To Violate Free Software Licenses
H4x0r Jim Duggan writes "Veteran violation chasers Shane Coughlan and Armijn Hemel have summarized how license violations are caused in the consumer electronics market under time-to-market pressure and thin profit margins: 'This problem is compounded when one board with a problem appears in devices supplied to a number of western companies. A host of violation reports spanning a dozen European and American businesses may eventually point towards a single mistake during development at an Asian supplier.' They also discuss the helpful organizations which have sprung up and the documents and procedures now available."
Let's say that you lived in a time when slavery took place, you opposed slavery, and you spoke out against it....
Then, you go to a slave auction, buy as many slaves as you can afford, and then let them go...
Would that make you a hypocrite for buying slaves?
(And I am not comparing the current copyright law to slavery)
There have been a lot of cases (the linksys modding scene for instance) in which the lack of GPL would have meant no release of source or tools. There are a variety of other examples.
In other words, thank God we've got Richard Stallman to use the legal system to beat people into submission, and force them to do exactly what WE want them to do. It might be unfortunate, but given that said people work for corporations, they're not as equal as we are, and hence, their wellbeing doesn't count.
I love the smell of freedom, don't you?
At this point BSD is basically an also-ran
Yep. Marginal, dead, and completely irrelevant; just like Netcraft said. I guess that's why FreeBSD is ranked 13th on DistroWatch. It might also have something to do with why NetBSD just had a new release last month, or OpenBSD having its' most recent release in May. It's probably also why Theo de Raadt gave a keynote speech about OpenBSD's development process in May, as well.
Because, you know, they're fringe, dead, irrelevant operating systems. Nobody uses them.
That's also why we've kept seeing stories like this crop up in the trade press over the last three months or so; because the GPL is just such an awesome, business-friendly license. Everyone just loves the freedom that their Uncle Richard has provided for them; I really can't imagine where we'd be if it wasn't for him.
not on the same level as linux or supported in anything like the same way in terms of FOSS and commercial software.
Yeah. Too bad World of Warcraft doesn't run on it. Having to surf the Web without Flash really hurts, too. Like you said, FreeBSD is so irrelevant, it doesn't even have 3D video card drivers.
rather
sed -e "s/don.t/do insignificantly small amounts of/g"
-paul
Is it morally superior to just give money away to whoever asks or to put it towards something that will definitely continue to do the public good, ensuring that those that gain advantage from it also help?
This is the FSF's standard rhetoric for justifying copyleft, to which I will give my own standard response. The enforcement of reciprocity is motivated by anti-corporate hate, fear, and paranoia. These are not emotions which form a sound basis for anything positive.
If you doubt that these emotions dictate almost all of the FSF's behaviour, all you really need to do is look around. Said emotions are blatantly obvious in virtually everything the organisation does.
The BSD license represents a gift which makes no assumptions or demands of its' potential recipients. People talk about pragmatism, of course, because that's necessary to impress corporations, but at the heart of the issue, the license represents a gift given by those who create software for its' own sake.
There is no hatred or terror of corporations such as Microsoft, or of a lack of reciprocity from others; there are simply programmers, following the same nature that they would whether Microsoft existed or not. As has been said, freedom is the only law that genius knows.
Maybe you're familiar, theologically speaking, with the concept of unconditional love. That is love which is given, irrespective of the nature of the recipient. It is, in other words, love which is not even partially distorted by fear.
Stallman has claimed that software licensing should not be considered in a vacuum, ethically, but should be consistent with our stance on other areas of life. Ironically, that is one area where we are in agreement.
You're a zealot.
You know, it's funny. I was just thinking the same thing about you. ;)
In all honesty, however, I cannot deny it. I was first exposed to FreeBSD in 1995, and came to feel very strongly about it almost immediately.
I am, admittedly, almost unheard of among BSD users.
I am unusual in the sense that, in addition to the others being much more phlegmatic than the Linux community, the usual BSD attitude is simply to allow the inherent integrity of both the system and its' license to prove themselves on an unaided basis, as there is a very strong, yet generally silent, belief that they are able to do so. Advocacy, therefore, is customarily considered unnecessary.
The difference between us, however, is that you're on the losing team. Richard Stallman continues making an embarassment of himself virtually whenever he is given an opportunity to do so. The current flap about Miguel de Icaza is only the latest outrage.
You will, of course, no doubt immediately leap to your Leader's defense in response to this, but what you or I think, as isolated individuals, is not the point, at this stage. The majority now officially consider Stallman as fringe, or worse. He has at least begun to lose (if not already totally lost) the degree of credibility which he had previously amassed with the computing public.
The FSF as an organisation, are also once again beginning the slide towards irrelevance. You only need to look at the unprecedent amount of derision their followers were exposed to here on Slashdot, in the comments attached to the story about Software Freedom Day.
For the last three months or so, we have also begun seeing stories in the trade press about how business is gradually waking up to the reality of, and abandoning, the GPL as a license; particularly given how much more of a legal minefield version 3 of it is.
The FSF represents a case where the Emperor genuinely has no clothes. The GPL as a license is based on erroneous, fear-based logic, and Richard Stallman has sought to create exactly the same kind of software monoculture (non-commercial, perhaps, but that is the only real difference) which his supporters rail at Microsoft for doing.
My primary m