Re: Nvidia and its choice to read the GPL "differently"

Lionel Bouton
2003-01-03T23:54:28Z

Ranjeet Shetye wrote:

>Hi RMS,
>
>Saw you here and thought I'd remind you. I got under your skin quite a
>few years back cos I wrote this perl-based cscope which I released for
>free - with a modified BSD licence stating that no one in pakistan or no
>person of pakistani nationality could use it and that this licence could
>not be modified to allow pakis to use it. You might ask why I did that ?
>Well, I am an Indian and I thought I'd just needle some pakis cos they
>are such nincompoops. Anyways, 9/11 proved me right that pakis (+
>saudis) suck ass big time.
>

Please reread your last sentence. An isolated event caused by the wills
and actions of a limited group (terrorists, terrorist backers) amongst a
larger group (pakistanese people as a whole including children that
don't even know the meaning of the word terrorist) is definitely nowhere
near a proof of something concerning the larger group.
Stating otherwise to promote segregation is pure racism.

>
>Getting back to open-licence software, if you hadn't been such a
>nitpicking ideologue, the free s/w world would have had a cscope at
>least 2 years earlier than it did. I gave you my version of a "free"
>licence, and you didn't like it one bit!
>

So do I if I understand the following correctly. You could call it
narrow-sighted but I'm very reluctent to increase the market share (and
by that overall influence) of software excluding people for no other
reason that their nationality.
Segregating groups of people nearly always help sustain violence between
people. Please verify this statement on past and current conflicts.

> That was the OTHER reason I did
>it. To prove a point to you, that EVEN in a Free software world, there
>might be some other price to be paid.
>
>
>A full-freedom software world might turn out to be a grey tasteless
>odourless flavourless communist world.
>

As long as proprietary software is not made unlawful where's the problem ?
You may link full-freesoftware inclination with communism if proprietary
software was forbiden (and competition between free software projects is
proved to be flawed) but I've never seen Richard state something like
this. If I missed something feel free to point me where to look.

Free software evolves in a different way than proprietary software. This
is true that most innovative products come with proprietary licenses
now. But I'm not sure this fact comes from the license differences.
Free software and proprietary software don't yet play on an even field.
There are huge inertial effects slowing Free Software market penetration
now. When the field will be even and some time will have passed we'll
know what places the two kinds will have and if the proprietary one
really lies in "innovative products" land.
Until then, enjoy the ride...

> Even free s/w needs competition
>to keep it on its toes, and money is the best damned motivation for
>normal people!
>

Depends on the amount of cash you have in the bank and your income. If
your current situation suits you, more won't motivate you as much as
something you desire and money can't buy (and there's a lot of this kind
out there).
What motivates me the most now (that the cash comes in regularly) is the
ability to learn and interact with various people. I've not yet had
enough of both. Most people spend their whole life pursuing various
ideals, relatively few want to be the richest person on Earth...

> While everyone, including me, appreciates what you've
>achieved in the past, your intransigence over your untenable extreme
>views on software freedom is the primary reason why you are losing
>ground everyday with your own supporters. Think about it.
>
>

Richard is an idealist. He can be annoying when you have your own feet
on the ground but setting your goals too high isn't a bad motivation for
making yourself better (unless you become an extremist of course)...

To come back on the Nvidia subject :

Considering the top performance mainstream 3D market now (ATI vs
Nvidia), seeing that:
- both ATI and Nvidia have efficient proprietary drivers for their
latest products (ATI ones are young and may still have problems I've not
heard of yet),
- at least ATI 8500 cards have an efficient OSS driver in the works
indicating ATI didn't make hiding *all* specs their internal policy.

Nvidia won't be an option for me and for every people that rely on my
advices unless they open their specs or the market reverts back to a
Nvidia monopol.

For the record, SiS lost directly at least tens and maybe hundreds of
chipset sells when I was forced to tell potential customers contacting
me directly that racks full of 645DX based systems might have to use PIO
modes for all IDE transfers until SiS moved to help on sis5513.c ...
Since then every other potential customer was directed to appropriate
kernel versions or kindly provided patches for their exotic
patched-kernel configurations (some don't even know how lucky they are
that I love to study new stuff)...

Remember : the fittest survives...

LB.