Re: Why is Nvidia given GPL'd code to use in non-freedrivers?

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

    Richard; this lovely view of life works great for (and not meaning to 
    belittle anybody's work here) small/self contained/trivial projects, 
    characterised by unix tools/apps which can be managed by one or a few 
    people in a reasonable timescale. I mean grep, sed, bison, dhcpd, 
    sendmail etc

The GNU/Linux system is pretty large.  For that matter, GCC and Linux
are pretty large.  So I think you're simply underestimating what we
can do ethically, as an excuse for doing it the usual grabbing way.

    But what about bigger projects? As stated previously, I develop computer 
    games. It takes 30+ people 2-3years continous effort and $3M - 10$M in 
    cash to produce.

I see no social need to be in such a hurry about it.  I'd rather it were
done more slowly and produced results that coexist with our freedom.

Meanwhile, people have already pointed out that there are ways to
raise money for some kinds of free software projects.  From what I
hear about game product cycles, you might be able to make the game
free after a year without losing much in sales.

But if that doesn't work for you, I would not consider it a great loss
for the world if your products were not produced.  They contribute
something to the world if they are free software, but otherwise not.