Re: [Qemu-devel] FreeOSZoo will stop March 1, 2005

["Jim C. Brown" <jma5@umd.edu>]

On Sat, Feb 12, 2005 at 02:18:32PM +0400, Brad Campbell wrote:
> Jean-Michel POURE wrote:
> >Dear friends,
> >
> >Following Fabrice decision to transform QEMU into a proprietary closed 
> >solution without any kind of future, I don't find any reason to loose my 
> >company time and money fostering FreeOSZoo.
> 
> Woah.. what a severe knee jerk reaction based on nothing. Perhaps before 
> throwing your toys out of the pram, taking your bat and ball and heading 
> home you might actually wait for a reply from Fabrice clarifying his 
> intentions?

That is a good question. Why is Fabrice making kqemu propertiary?

I prefer open source code myself (because then I can fix any bugs in the code
on my own) but I do use propertiary software from time to time and I can live
with kqemu being propertiary. I don't like it, but as long as it works it is not
a problem for me.

And if it was, I'd just use qemu-softmmu and stay open.

It may be closed source but it is still free (as in beer). At least he isn't
charging us for his hard work.

> 
> Everyone seems so quick to scream and shout about a single little binary 
> object and license for one tiny part of the project. Perhaps there is a 
> good reason behind what Fabrice is doing. I'm just astonished at the 
> reaction to this. Whinge, bitch, moan.. I'm sure he is a busy lad and will 
> formulate a reply as time permits. Until you get a clear statement on the 
> issue (Fabrice is a clever lad, I'm damn sure he knows *exactly* what he is 
> doing) why not just stop pontificating, hurling abuse and accusations and 
> get on with your lives!
> 

I agree that shutting FreeOSZoo down just because of kqemu is extreme (one
can check out cvs right now and get all the open source qemu w/o any
propertiary code whatsoever, so qemu is still free).

I can think of 3 reasons why kqemu is not free:

1) There are those that use qemu without giving Fabrice any money or credit
(such as iEmulator). This is best resolved by legal action, but it may be
difficult for a single person to fight against an entire company, financial-wise.

2) Fabrice wants to hold on to the source in order to make revenue from it in
the future.

3) (This one is a long shot) There may be patent issues that prevent Fabrice
from releasing his source code.

Remember that the rest of qemu is open source. So if it is such a big problem
for you, why not reimplement kqemu yourself? I'm trying, you can too.

> 
> Brad
> -- 
> "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability
> to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable
> for their apparent disinclination to do so." -- Douglas Adams
> 
> 
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