[CS-FSLUG] LINUX COMMUNITY WANTS MORE SAY IN OS DIRECTION

[Don Parris]

On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 16:45:22 -0600, N. Thompson <n.thomp at sasktel.net> wrote:
> Web site layout is terrible in Konqueror (MDK 10.0).
> 
> As for Sun they don't have much in the way of a case here yet, they didn't
> give any examples of the unhappy companies they were talking about and were
> very general in their statements. Besides that history shows that almost
> every time a company gets its hand on something it begins either gradually or
> abruptly corrupting that thing, Sun's trying to shift control of Linux away
> from Linus is a selfish thing to do since first off its Linus' hard work
> along with the hard work of several contributors who knew who was going to be
> receiving their work and secondly because chances are if code was rejected
> there was questionable licensing behind it in which case companies Like
> RedHat would have likely removed it anyway. If Sun is really that upset that
> they don't have as much control as they want they can always fork the Linux
> kernel, or if they want do like Apple and use something based off BSD
> instead.
> 
> 
A good point raised by ESR is that people can fork the kernel.  We
have x-emacs today because some of the developers couldn't agree with
RMS on some issues.  It's a lot like Christian denominations - mostly
political striving.  But FOSS allows for the various differences to
co-exist.  Sun can fork the Linux kernel, and call it "Java OS" or
something (in keeping with their recent history of naming the Sun Java
Desktop without any relevant connection to Java itself).

Each of us on this list can fork the kernel, or all of us collectively
can fork it.  We merely have to continue the GPL.  While, at times,
this can be bad, it can also be a great strength.  It is also one of
the things that makes FOSS _very_ attractive to me.  I have the
freedom to modify the code to fit my needs, and to improve the code
and release my imporvements to the community so that all benefit.

As for Sun claiming to have "invented" open source, I thought it was
RMS who started the whole ball rolling.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

Don
-- 
DC Parris GNU Evangelist
http://matheteuo.org/
gnumathetes at gmail.com
Free software is like God's love - 
you can share it with anyone anywhere anytime!