Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on April 02, 2007 08:49 PM
If things were as clear cut as you say, it wouldn't be up for debate. I don't see too many people crying to give Novell a break. Novell has the current GPL2 stuff as always and can try and convince everyone to support the old GPL2 codebase instead of moving to GPL3.
The FSF has its preferrences, but they do want heavy adoption of the GPL3. We will have to wait and see what the market thinks as a whole.
A lot of groups actually like a powerful GPL3 because it gives an edge to the copyright holder. And many people aren't enamored with patents which is the main problem with the Novell deal: they tried to get an up on everyone in the community by leaning on the Monopolist. A lot of smaller corporations, independent developers, and end users are not too happy.
I think a compromise might be to give Novell and any others that think they have questionable deals that come forward now a break for a number of years (eg, 3 or 5). The only problem is who decides what is a boundary case and what is simply someone trying to get a free pass to violate the GPL for several years. We have to remember that these exceptions are giving these companies an advantage over everyone else. Why should Novell be allowed to violate a possible boundary case, but I can't? We are talking about the same source code and copyrights.
I don't mind too much people just putting things in the public domain, but damn some people are so greedy. They take from others' generosity and then try to enforce their restrictions on everyone else. What some will do to restrict everyone else for a buck. Rather than work on the better mousetrap, they spend their time trying to prevent others from building and using that better mousetrap. Microsoft is just sickening to me, and I don't have much sympathy for a Novell trying to create and share a duopoly with them. Novell is using the generosity of the community and then taking advantage of restrictions to keep as many players out of the game as possible.
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Re:No "grandfather clause" for Novell!
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on April 02, 2007 08:49 PMThe FSF has its preferrences, but they do want heavy adoption of the GPL3. We will have to wait and see what the market thinks as a whole.
A lot of groups actually like a powerful GPL3 because it gives an edge to the copyright holder. And many people aren't enamored with patents which is the main problem with the Novell deal: they tried to get an up on everyone in the community by leaning on the Monopolist. A lot of smaller corporations, independent developers, and end users are not too happy.
I think a compromise might be to give Novell and any others that think they have questionable deals that come forward now a break for a number of years (eg, 3 or 5). The only problem is who decides what is a boundary case and what is simply someone trying to get a free pass to violate the GPL for several years. We have to remember that these exceptions are giving these companies an advantage over everyone else. Why should Novell be allowed to violate a possible boundary case, but I can't? We are talking about the same source code and copyrights.
I don't mind too much people just putting things in the public domain, but damn some people are so greedy. They take from others' generosity and then try to enforce their restrictions on everyone else. What some will do to restrict everyone else for a buck. Rather than work on the better mousetrap, they spend their time trying to prevent others from building and using that better mousetrap. Microsoft is just sickening to me, and I don't have much sympathy for a Novell trying to create and share a duopoly with them. Novell is using the generosity of the community and then taking advantage of restrictions to keep as many players out of the game as possible.
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