Re: Linux, Inc. (Re: Linux GPL and binary module exception clause?)

[Rob Landley <rob@landley.net>]

I suspect most people are going to ignore this message because it's so out 
there and loopy, but I thought I'd address it because I think Andre is 
serious.

On Saturday 13 December 2003 18:51, Andre Hedrick wrote:
> How about a charter orgainization called Linux, Inc. or The Linux
> Foundation ?

Why not an organization called OSDL?

> CEO Linus Torvalds <aka ph> :-)

Because he doesn't want to.

> Now Linux, Inc is designed to regulate the commerial use of Linux and

Regulating the commercial use of open source code.  Uh-huh.  And you honestly 
don't know why this won't work?

> defend the legal causes and actions of the kernel.  Everything has a cost.
> Any company, organization, country, or what ever is required to pay 10% of
> gross sales associated with products ship with Linux kernel inside,
> period.

Isn't this what SCO is trying to do?  Make everybody who ships Linux pay them 
money?  (And if them requiring money from people just to use Linux violates 
the GPL, why would _you_ be able to force people to?  We have a hard enough 
time getting source code out of people in basic compliance with the license 
terms, and you want money out of them, potentially in violation of the 
license?)

Alright, ignore that for a moment.  Think back: what if everybody who wanted 
to assemble a PC had to pay for a license to do so?  How far would PC 
hardware have gone?  On the left, you have the ISA bus, which is free to use.  
On the right, you have the micro-channel bus, which is patented and required 
a fee.

Which won in the open market?

> Now this allows for commerial adoption and commerial licnesing of Linux.

Excuse me, we HAVE commercial adoption and commercial licensing of Linux.  We 
have IBM putting a billion a year into it and HP putting $IBM*2 a year into 
their press releases.  Did you miss that memo?

> If this offer and idea is rejected then it proves the lack of seriousness
> in the original goals of "world domination".

PC hardware managed to avoid requiring anybody pay licensing fees for the 
basic design for 20 years now.  People have voluntarily joined consortia, but 
they haven't had to buy a license just to belong to the club of white box 
manufacturers or component vendors.

> 10% of the little guys ...

I've worked for little guys that this would have bankrupted.  And if such a 
requirement had been in place, I would have recommended that they use 
FreeBSD, technical merit notwithstanding.

> Now what to do with the money.

Belling the cat.

"Gee, if we only had a gazaillion dollars..."

> Hire really good SHARKS and ACCOUNTANTS ...
> Fund and promote opensource development like a foundation ...

There's about fifty.  Perl's got a foundation, Gnome has a foundation, KDE has 
a foundation...  Eric Raymond's most recent pet project was the Open Source 
Awards, which among other things involved giving cash to people who had done 
neat hacks.  (Sponsored by C/Net, if I remember...)

> Yeah it starts to look like a business and that is what Linux needs.

BeOS looked like a business.  OS/2 looked like a business.  Geos looked a lot 
like a business.  Desqview/X looked like a business.  AmigaOS looked like a 
business.

Ret Hat looks like a business.  Novell/SuSE looks like a business.  Lindows 
looks like a business.  (I'm not sure they ARE, but they LOOK like one...)

> Yeah, this is to simple and easy of an idea.

There's an old saying: "For every problem, there is a solution that's simple, 
easy, and wrong."  You're trying to address a problem that doesn't exist with 
a solution that nobody would support, and you're implying that the entire 
rest of the world is either stupid or not serious if they don't think you're 
idea is worth even the amount of attention it takes to respond negatively.

There are hundreds of thousands of people in the world who make their living 
from Linux right now.  Capitalism says that a couple percent of them are 
going to get royally screwed, no matter WHAT it is...

> Cheers,
>
> Andre Hedrick
> LAD Storage Consulting Group

Rob