Re: [future of drivers?] a proposal for binary drivers.

DervishD
2006-03-11T12:06:22Z

Hi David :)

* David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> dixit:
> > I don't want my work used by a corporation without giving any
> > modification under the same conditions under I published my work.
> > Binary driver can and will do harm if allowed.
>
> If you want to restrict *use* you need an EULA, shrink wrap agreement,
> click-through or signed contract. If you give away copies of your work with
> no conditions on the *receipt* of the work, you lose the right to control
> how the work is used. Otherwise, someone could drop a million copies of
> their poem from an airplane and then sue everyone who read it.

Sorry, I meant "make a derivative work and distribute it" when I
wrote "used by a corporation without giving any modification...".
My english is very poor sometimes O:)

I was referring to the fact that if I use GPL is because I don't
want anyone using my work to produce new work and distribute it
without distributing the modification, too. In the kernel case, a
binary driver uses work made by others without giving anything back
(and not, I don't consider the driver itself enough "giving back"),
at least that's how I see it.

If binary drivers are allowed, soon we will have only drivers for
a couple of distros (I don't use a distro, so I'm lost) and they will
be unmaintained as soon as new hardware is released. I have had that
problem in Windows with hardware that is only three years old,
hardware that I can use in Linux without problem (my Linux box is 5
years old on the average, but my graphics card was manufactured in
1998 IIRC). In MS-DOS, binary drivers were an issue because they were
abandoned as soon as Windows-95 was released, but the worst thing is
that a good bunch of GOOD hardware will work ONLY with the latest
release of WinXP. I don't want that to happen in Linux. And if I have
the sources, I have a chance of fixing bugs or whatever.

I know copyright won't help in that issue, but licensing can, and
I think that the kernel is doing the right thing.

Raúl Núñez de Arenas Coronado

--
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