> Sometimes i wonder if it was a wise decision to put Linux under GPL and
> not using something like a modified BSD copyright...
It was! Most hardware sold nowadays is shipped with
binary-and-dos/win95-only-drivers. Thus it is useless for people using
other OSes. I think that's bad. I better like buying hardware of which I
could get excessively good documentation or understandable driver-source
so that I am able to use the hardware device with any OS (perhaps by
having to implement a driver for a special OS myself).
Linux should not go this way. There should always be the source-code
provided with any software-package. Linux should stay completely open and
this means even the kernel-drivers.
>
> Just in case you don't know: some companies don't port their commercial
> software to linux because the license of the C/C++ library would force
> them to provide the customer with the source code. No joke!
That's the point! They don't want you to know about their hardware. This
is because they don't want other companies to simply copy it.
But it might be that you want to use some other OS than linux in the
future or that you update your kernel and the module stuff has changed and
then you have a driver-binary for all your hardware-devices but they won't
work anymore. The companies have been busted and you will never get a
driver working with the actual kernel/OS.
-- Raoul Boenisch, Winkhauser Talweg 165, 45473 Muelheim an der Ruhr, Germany phone/fax/v34: +49 208 764257 homepage: http://home.pages.de/~raoul WARNING: I am being intercepted. Use PGP to send sensitive info.