RE: Why is Nvidia given GPL'd code to use in closed source drivers?

Vlad@Vlad.geekizoid.com
2003-01-05T19:22:29Z

Dude,

Give it up. No one buys the GNU/Linux thing, and on LKML, it's really
just noise. My understanding was that you acknowledged that the kernel was
"Linux" (or "Freax" as I once heard Linus refer to it on the radio, though
it was a professor of his that made him change the name, not an FTP admin)
and that most "Linux" distro's come bundled with 95% or so GNU software.
So, please - go join the Slackare, Debian, Red SHat, Mandrake, Connectiva,
etc mailinglists and rant about that crap, but please leave if off of LKML -
the signal to noise ratio is bad enough here without your "help".

Also, I didn't see your answer to the question of weither hurd should be
called Linux/Hurd or not - given that you say much of what the rest of us
call "Linux" is, in your opinion, a derived work of GNU, and given that Hurd
borrows large chunks of Linux code, would you state your opinion on the name
for the record? Thanks.

Regards,
Scott Lockwood
http://geekizoid.com/
http://sporks-r-us.com/

-----Original Message-----
From: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
[mailto:linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org]On Behalf Of Richard Stallman
Sent: Sunday, January 05, 2003 12:34 PM
To: lm@bitmover.com
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org; mark@mark.mielke.cc;
billh@gnuppy.monkey.org; paul@clubi.ie; riel@conectiva.com.br;
Hell.Surfers@cwctv.net
Subject: Re: Why is Nvidia given GPL'd code to use in closed source
drivers?

Linux is a copy of Unix. There is very little new stuff in Linux.

This is no coincidence. GNU/Linux parallels Unix because I chose that
design in 1983. It is foolish to focus on innovation when you are
starting a race with a multi-year handicap. The first task is to
catch up.

The primary purpose of GNU is the freedom to cooperate. Innovation is
nice, but secondary. We followed the design of Unix because that was
the most reliable way to produce a working portable system. We made
it compatible with Unix so that many users could easily switch to it.
We deliberately avoided innovative approaches in many cases--the
noteworthy exception being the GNU Hurd. (Perhaps that exception was
a bad decision.)

Although innovation is not our primary focus, there is a fair amount
of innovation in GNU packages. GNU Emacs is better than any previous
Emacs. (The first Emacs was another innovation in our community.)
GCC was the first portable truly optimizing compiler, and the first
optimizing compiler that supported debugging. Autoconf was an
innovation in portability technology. Looking elsewhere in our
community, Perl and Python seem to be innovative; the X Window System
was too. There are surely more examples that I don't know of.

You get the idea. Sun makes more in 2 days than Red Hat makes all year.

This is very significant if money is your main goal. Both GNU and
Linux exist because of people who have different priorities.