Re: [Sheflug] NVidia on SuSE and the SuSE/Novell/M$ thing

[David Holden <dh@xxxxxxxx>]

On Tuesday 27 March 2007 5:40 pm, Lesley Binks wrote:
> Richard Ibbotson wrote:
> > Alex
> >
> >> I have only got compiz, which is less crack-y than beryl but with
> >> many of the same effects. It works great with the stock free
> >> software ATI and Intel drivers; I only occasionally run into
> >> problems with OOo upsetting the system.
> >
> > Thanks to this M$/Novell thing I've had to throw openSuSE away due to
> > the fact that people shout at me when I go to public events.  I tried
> > Ubuntu Edy Eft for a while but it was full of bugs and not what I
> > wanted.  Got the legacy Nvidia drivers working but couldn't get Beryl
> > or Compiz going.
>
> I experienced no real problems setting up an NVidia Quadro 900 XGL on
> SuSE 10.2 .
>
> There's a very good How To here
> http://www.suse.de/~sndirsch/nvidia-installer-HOWTO.html
> (in English).
>
> As far as people shouting about SuSE, Novell and M$ ....
> <rant>
>
> My first postgraduate job I used Microsoft Xenix (1986) which was
> eventually sold off to SCO and they sold it as SCO Xenix (1987)... they
> then later sold it as SCO Unix (1987/88).  In the 21st century, SCO
> claim some copyright to some core material in most Linux distros out there.
>
> I have no idea if there is any intellectual property originating from
> SCO or indeed M$ in Linux distros today but, if there is, then I feel
> it's egg on the faces of most dogmatic people in the free software
> community.  If there is one thing *I'm* dogmatic about it's plagiarism
> and the one type of person I hate with a vengeance is the Intellectual
> Property Thief.  My dislike for dogma rests simply at the intense level.
>
> My view of SuSE and Novell was that it was good for Linux in that it
> gave the potential for a movement away from M$ in the corporate
> environment.  I am not talking about some geek ( typically white, male,
> at best antisocial if not sociopathic, and often totally misogynist)
> beavering away on a piece of C and assembler to get a device working.
>
> I'm talking about non-technical people in a commercial environment being
> able to use Linux within their everyday working corporate environment in
> a stable manner without having to learn emacs and LaTeX just to write a
> memo.  Obviously this is of zero benefit to the Linux movement.
>
> If some people in the free software and open source movement can't see
> that as a benefit for all in the free software movement then I can only
> wonder what planet they are on.  Do they seriously expect people,
> ordinary generally technophobic people, to want to venture into Debian
> unstable or gentoo and compile everything from scratch?  Or are they
> only exclusively considering the technically elite here - who are
> probably already using some Linux distro or some version of OpenBSD?.
>
> Do they really expect people to move from something familiar into the
> unknown when faced with uber-dogma in the style of the Russian Revolution?
>
> As for using Fedora, well that's just the opensource version of RedHat
> and a lot of free development work probably feeds back into later
> releases of RedHat and ends up on Dell machines.  So there's profit
> being made there out of free software and I would suspect that the many
> of the original developers don't get any benefit from it.  Why is there
> not as much of an issue with this?
>
> I really fail to see where some people think they are coming from in
> this respect.
>
> Some pundits out there support the move
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/02/novell_microsoft_deal/
> and point out where the Linux community lets itself down.  My view is
> it's not the license that is the problem, it's the attitude from the
> source, i.e. the open source and free software movements, that the
> license is plain for end users when it has been clearly demonstrated and
> commercially exploited by Oracle that the license isn't clear to the end
> user.
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/03/02/novell_q1_07_earnings/ shows
> that the Linux part of Novell is improving with a 46% increase in
> revenue over last year.  Is this what the dogmatists are upset about?
>
> Novell has sold out to M$ for reasons best known to themselves.  Maybe
> the deal was finally too good to refuse?
>
> I use the Linux and OpenBSD distros because i don't like Windows and I
> don't like licensing restrictions and the general dumbing down via the
> WIMP environment.  I use SuSE as my everyday platform because most
> things work in it.  I've been using it since 7.3 and I haven't stopped
> yet.
>
> That there is a business model for Linux can be demonstrated from the
> SuSE/Novell/M$ and the Fedora/RedHat combinations.
> </rant>
>
> Regards
>
> L.
>
> _______________________________________________
>         Sheffield Linux User's Group
>   http://wwww.sheflug.org.uk/mailfaq.html
>  GNU - The choice of a complete generation

 For me its a very simple case of being fair.

This statement from stallman was recently convey by Bruce Perens and I think 
sums this up nicely

---
"Free software means software that respects users essential freedoms,
including the freedom to change the software so it does what you wish,
freedom to run it, and freedom to redistribute copies. The denial of
these freedoms is what makes proprietary software unethical. To make
these freedoms a reality, we set out 23 years ago to develop the GNU
operating system, which is the basis of all today's quote Linux
unquote distributions, including that of Novell.

In 1983, a few free programs existed, and unscrupulous middleman
eagerly took them and made non-free modified versions. It was clear
that to deliver freedom to every user we would have to find a way to
defend the users' freedom. The method we developed is the GNU General
Public License. The purpose of the GNU GPL is to ensure that
redistributors of the program respect the freedom of those further
downstream. The GPL defends the freedom of all users by blocking the
known methods of making free software proprietary.

Novell and Microsoft have tried a new method: using Microsoft's
patents to give an advantage to Novell customers only. If they get
away with scaring users into paying Novell, they will deny users
the most basic freedom, freedom zero: the freedom to run the program.

Microsoft have been threatening free software with software patents
for many years, but without a partner in our community, the only thing
it could do was threaten to sue users and distributors. This had
enough drawbacks that Microsoft has not yet tried it. Attacking in
combination with a collaborator in our community was much more
attractive.

If nothing resists such deals, they will spread, and make a mockery of
the freedom of free software. So we have decided to update the GNU
General Public License not to allow such deals, for the future
software releases covered by GPL version 3. Anyone making a
discriminatory patent pledge in connection with distribution of
GPL-covered software will have to extend it to everyone.

In the mean time, let's make it clear to Novell that its conduct is
not the conduct of a bona-fide member of the GNU/Linux community."
---

Essentially it seems to be that Novell are using the hard work of an enormous 
number of software developers who released their software BOTH under the GPL 
and IN THE SPIRIT OF THE GPL but ignoring the SPIRIT part.


So if you were one of those developers who for example had spent hundreds of 
hours perfecting say some networking software and released it under the GPL I 
can understand how you may get a little "dogmatic" about this abuse.

 Cheers,

 Dave.




-- 
Dr. David Holden.

See: <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html>
regarding Word or PowerPoint. GPG key available on request.
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        Sheffield Linux User's Group
  http://wwww.sheflug.org.uk/mailfaq.html
 GNU - The choice of a complete generation