Re: GPL V3 and Linux - Dead Copyright Holders

[Karim Yaghmour <karim@opersys.com>]

Pierre Ossman wrote:
> This whole DRM:d hardware issue is a bit different though since it seems
> to be moving to a point where it cannot be avoided. "Vote with your
> wallet" fails when there are so few of us that care about these things.
> With they way electronics are packaged nowadays (chip packages that is),
> it's getting increasingly difficult to build your own stuff. My fear is
> that open source will be something you can only fiddle with on your ten
> year old computer from the pre-DRM era.

Forgive me, but I don't subscribe to this cataclysmic scenario. The only
reason it's getting increasingly difficult to build your own stuff is
because the chip manufacturers are interested in making money, and to
do that they have to answer market demand, and market demand nowadays
is for gizmos/systems that have an ever-increasing number of features
and ever-increasing performance requirements. Cell phones are a prime
example. So, yes, it would be totally impossible to think today that
any single group of individuals could reproduce the early Apple era,
but that's just life -- things get complicated with time.

As a techie I love tinkering with things, and I'm always on the lookout
for mainstream electronics which I can hack to get Linux running on
them. At the end of the day, though, one has to come to terms with what
was pointed out earlier: we are dealing with proprietary hardware. And
as much as that may be disappointing, one has to realize that unlike
software, one cannot create and spread open-source hardware like one
can do with open source software in his basement just using free time --
because all the volunteers in the world cannot mint silicon and fab
PCBs and make them available to the rest of humanity.

We can convert all we want, but belief doesn't make money grow on trees.

Karim
-- 
President  / Opersys Inc.
Embedded Linux Training and Expertise
www.opersys.com  /  1.866.677.4546