Re: [Qemu-devel] why is kqemu closed?

[Auke Kok <sofar@foo-projects.org>]

Leonardo E. Reiter wrote:
> No it's not!  In fact, in the latest version, he explicitly gives it a 
> commercial ("Proprietary") license. 

I actually submitted this as a patch to him through this list ;^)

> I admit since I am a vendor, I have certain biases against forcing all 
> software to be GPL.  However I respect these licenses fully, and also 
> respect the author's choice to use whatever license he or she pleases, 
> and also to allow exceptions to these licenses.  You might recall Linus 
> Torvalds years ago explicitly giving an exception to "binding" when it 
> came to loading kernel modules.  It would be hard to convince any vendor 
> in the world to develop software for Linux if you were not allowed to 
> run non-GPL applications on Linux.  Let's hope that never happens, 
> although I understand that the latest sentiments seem to unfortunately 
> be leaning that way.  This is not how Linux will beat Windows on the 
> desktop, nor on the server!

applications != kernel space code. It would be rather *good* for linux if all 
kernel-space processes were open sourced, even for trivial things like VM 
emulators ;^)

no matter how you turn Linus' arguments, he doesn't like anything else than 
ports from windows driver objects linked, and I can really agree with that. 
Whatever the laywers say about it is moot - only judges listen to them and 
Open Source doesn't listen to laywers (in generally). Plenty of vendors are 
already backing up Open Source too, and not just with t-shirts and penguins.

I do not think that kqemu benefits from being closed source, and probably more 
people with me. People will pick an open implementation before any closed one, 
even industry, they're picking up faster than you think ;^)

I did not agree with kqemu being released without the proprietary flag, which 
is why I submitted the issue, and,if I can help it, it'll be open source or 
surpassed by something that is - no offense.

Cheers,

Auke