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Thanks for your reply. For the record, I'm strongly pro free software drivers and all my current hardware works flawlessy without binary drivers under Linux. Furthermore, (this is in reply to the 1%-market-share guys) I advice my friends/family to buy hardware with open specs and drivers, whenever they ask me for input on their planned hardware purchases, even if they don't happen to run Linux atm.

Although I have no numbers at hand, I guess that the tech savvy Linux users have quite some impact on the purchase behaviour of their less tech-savvy peers, given, that they tend to be called, when things break.

With that said, I have to confess, that a scheme similar to the one proposed by GKH would make me very uneasy, since it tries to use the GPL (that covers only distribution process) to get a grip on mere useage. This is a situation, where the cause (get rid of binary blobs) doesn't justify the misuse of the tools (GPLv2), at least imho.

I have interpreted the post by GKH in such a way, that he

- has not thought about all legal consequences of such a prevention mechanism, when he stated, that he would like to ban binary blobs completly within a year and he.

- is very frustrated by the problems binary blobs can cause wrt to system stability and support (here, I deeply sympathize with him, since I have been biten by such things myself already enough)

If I have missed something else between the lines, please feel free to correct me.

Re the discussion v2 vs. v3 : Yes, I know the kernel dev's position paper [1], and I've read it in september when it came out and I've read it now, just in case I've glitched over something. I'm still not able to identify a passage, where the kernel devs raise concern about a shift from distribution to useage wrt the scope of the GPLv3. They have objections to the DRM clause, the patent clause, the set of additional restrictions, they criticise the drafting process and the role of the FSF, yes. But I wasn't able to catch GKH's drift wrt to the useage vs. distribution phrase.

Sorry, if my first post has been unclear.

[1]http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS5561540450.html

EDIT: Just in case you wondered: I'm also very positive about the GPLv3 and welcome the changes proposed. But I guess that community projects without a "or later" cause will have difficulties to change the license without a required transfer of copyright for all contributions to one entity, no matter how funky the GPLv3 would be. So, although the discussion process itself was very interesting, it was very unlikely in the beginning, that the Linux Kernel would or even could swith to GPLv3 as a whole.

Edited 2006-12-14 13:24