video cards

[Leo Mauler]

--- Luke -Jr <luke at dashjr.org> wrote:

> On Thursday 03 April 2008, Jeffrey Watts wrote:
>
> > So I put it to Luke thus (and I'm echoing Leo): 
> > If Stallman (the most hardheaded and fervent 
> > Free Software advocate on the planet) and 
> > Torvalds (the reason you're here) both say 
> > it's cool, how is it that you feel that your 
> > viewpoint is superior?
> 
> Torvalds has nothing to do with why I'm here. 
> If Linux didn't exist, we'd be using either 
> HURD or a BSD kernel.

HURD development reminds me a great deal of Charles
Babbage's failed attempt to create his "Difference
Engine": GNU keeps changing the goals and the design
so often that HURD might as well be vaporware.  Even
now they've had one year longer than Linux to develop
HURD (possibly 8 years longer if you include the
"TRIX" years) and they're just getting around to a
bug-ridden crash-prone version 0.2, barely usable as a
hobby machine and certainly useless as a production
machine.

As for a BSD kernel having the success BSD "licensing"
might as well be "public domain" for all the
protection it doesn't offer to the developer.  A BSD
kernel with a BSD license can be "Embraced, Extended,
And Extinguished" in typical Microsoft fashion.  The
only reason there's a viable competitor to Microsoft
today is that the competitor's kernel is not using a
BSD license, but rather the GPL license.

If Linus hadn't brought in his kernel, UNIX would
still be in the server rooms and not in the public
eye, and we certainly wouldn't have anything to
discuss here.  Saying that any of the so-called
"alternatives" to Linux would have taken over without
Linux is completely ludicrous.

> Stallman doesn't think everything should be free,
> and admits there is a legal problem, so what's 
> your argument again?

Where does Stallman actually say there's a legal
issue?

http://tinyurl.com/2cku3s

"So what did Sun actually do? It allowed more
convenient redistribution of the binaries of its Java
platform. With this change, GNU/Linux distros CAN
INCLUDE the non-free Sun Java platform, just as some
now include the non-free nVidia driver. But they do so
only at the cost of being non-free."

Stallman doesn't actually "admit there is a legal
problem", so what's your argument again?


      ____________________________________________________________________________________
You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster Total Access, No Cost.  
http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text5.com