Re: Why is Nvidia given GPL'd code to use in closed source drivers?

Steven Barnhart
2003-01-04T23:01:57Z

> Linux is a copy of Unix. There is very little new stuff in Linux.
> All of the innovation is built on top of a copy of a commercial work.
>
> To date, nothing remotely as influential as Unix has come out of the
> open source community. Sure, there are a ton of copies of existing work,
> that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about new things. I keep
> coming back to this because some of you refuse to get it. It costs A LOT
> OF MONEY TO MAKE NEW STUFF. Because we are stupid, we all make a lot of
> mistakes, we throw away those mistakes. The free software model doesn't
> generate 1/1000th of the money it would take to make progress continue
> at its current rate in the software world. Don't believe me? Cool.
> Go start a company, GPL your work, get back to me in 5 years and show
> me how well it worked.
>
> Other than distributions, where are those free software success stories?
> Oh, yes, Cygnus. They were doing about $25M/year or so when redhat bought
> them. Whoopee. And Red Hat, *with* Cygnus, is doing all of $80M/year.
> And we all agree that they are the leader in the free software financial
> success stories, right? Who's bigger? IBM? Let's see, spent $1B and
> by their own statements "almost have made that back". Hmm, running at
> a loss but going to make it up on volume.

Sun makes more in 2 days than Red Hat makes all year.
> It doesn't even take Microsoft a whole day to make what Red Hat makes in
> a year.

Something rms is totally ignoring..wonder how much the fsf makes oh wait,
they probably believe in the "we don't need money if we are helping make
software more free and available for the users" approach. Anyways this
really needs to end. Bottom line..OSS is the best especially when battling
MS. No one company controls something. Problem...if you care to make a hefty
profit their may be some quirks you need to address. Don't get me wrong I
use OSS as much as possible but I'd proably go with the "recover the
developing costs before gpl'ng it" approach.

Steven