Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 1st Aug 2006 17:50 UTC, submitted by Moulinneuf
In a change of heart, Novell has ceased distributing proprietary software modules such as 3D video drivers that plug into the Linux kernel. The change came with Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10, released in July. With the move, Novell is aligning itself with the Free Software Foundation, which shuns proprietary software in general but in particular loathes proprietary modules that run as a component of the open-source Linux kernel.
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Member since:
2006-03-17
> It might not be legally, everywhere, but it's still a
> decent way to shut the zealots up who can't possibly
> survive unless their machine isn't "tainted" at all.
Why do you disrespect the developer's position?
They are not "zealots", they are those who own the copyright. As opposed to public domain software, Linux is a copyrighted open source software project. It's not a user's decision to respect the copyright holders' position, users *must* respect it. It's a law.
> If it breaks the license to mix and match compiled
> code, then make so it works out.
Great proposal. Go ahead and implement a framework that allows 3D drivers to reside in the user space. It will be a lot of work, but the kernel people will probably happily accept it into the mainline kernel.
Those kernel people I know don't have any problem with proprietary software in general. They have a problem with proprietary code in the kernel because proprietary code in the kernel is just ugly.
Greg Kroah-Hartman (long-time Linux contributor, today a Novell employee) explicitly proposed using libusb for proprietary USB drivers. He doesn't want to kill proprietary drivers, he just wants to keep them out of the kernel.
Now go ahead and write something like libusb for the PCI bus and convince NVidia and ATI to use it. Novell will probably happily accept the resulting user-space driver and include it in all products.
> But to completely deny someone the software that is
> given away as freeware without trying to find a
> common ground just because of the FSF's extremist
> agenda is idiotic.
Please leave the FSF out of this discussion. The FSF doesn't contribute much to the Linux kernel (to the resulting operating system, yes, but not to the kernel). Just ignore FSF statements about the Linux kernel. What counts is the position of the actual Linux contributors.