From: drew@juliet.cs.colorado.edu (Drew Eckhardt) Subject: Re: What would people think of binary-only software on Linux? Date: Mon, 1 Mar 1993 06:16:04 GMT
In article <1mkqfvINNcts@shelley.u.washington.edu> tzs@carson.u.washington.edu (Tim Smith) writes:
>If someone developed applications or drivers for Linux and sold them
>in binary-only form, what would the reaction be?
Applications : IMHO, I'd rather have applications in source
form (not shrouded 'C') so that I can fix any bugs. However,
if it's a choice between no source and no application, I'll
choose the former.
Device drivers : Chances are that you won't have much of a
market for device drivers - there are plenty of hackers
who'll write free drivers for popular hardware, and Linux
isn't seeing wide use in niches where data aquisition,
etc would require special hardware and device drivers.
The legal end of it could be tricky because of the GPL. With the
current system, Linux device drivers are an integral part of the
kernel. This means that the kernel + device drivers is a
derived work. As a derived work, source must be available for
the device drivers.
-- Boycott USL/Novell for their absurd anti-BSDI lawsuit. | Drew Eckhardt Condemn Colorado for Amendment Two. | drew@cs.Colorado.EDU Use Linux, the fast, flexible, and free 386 unix |