From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751092AbWBBTi1 (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 Feb 2006 14:38:27 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751173AbWBBTi1 (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 Feb 2006 14:38:27 -0500 Received: from opersys.com ([64.40.108.71]:1292 "EHLO www.opersys.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751092AbWBBTi0 (ORCPT ); Thu, 2 Feb 2006 14:38:26 -0500 Message-ID: <43E26300.5040709@opersys.com> Date: Thu, 02 Feb 2006 14:52:32 -0500 From: Karim Yaghmour Reply-To: karim@opersys.com Organization: Opersys inc. User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040805 Netscape/7.2 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en, fr, fr-be, fr-ca, fr-fr MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Pierre Ossman CC: Linus Torvalds , Alan Cox , Filip Brcic , Glauber de Oliveira Costa , Thomas Horsten , linux-kernel Subject: Re: GPL V3 and Linux - Dead Copyright Holders References: <43DE57C4.5010707@opersys.com> <5d6222a80601301143q3b527effq526482837e04ee5a@mail.gmail.com> <200601302301.04582.brcha@users.sourceforge.net> <43E0E282.1000908@opersys.com> <43E1C55A.7090801@drzeus.cx> <1138891081.9861.4.camel@localhost.localdomain> <43E23C79.8050606@drzeus.cx> <43E24767.1090708@drzeus.cx> <43E25B92.8060602@drzeus.cx> In-Reply-To: <43E25B92.8060602@drzeus.cx> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Pierre Ossman wrote: > This whole DRM:d hardware issue is a bit different though since it seems > to be moving to a point where it cannot be avoided. "Vote with your > wallet" fails when there are so few of us that care about these things. > With they way electronics are packaged nowadays (chip packages that is), > it's getting increasingly difficult to build your own stuff. My fear is > that open source will be something you can only fiddle with on your ten > year old computer from the pre-DRM era. Forgive me, but I don't subscribe to this cataclysmic scenario. The only reason it's getting increasingly difficult to build your own stuff is because the chip manufacturers are interested in making money, and to do that they have to answer market demand, and market demand nowadays is for gizmos/systems that have an ever-increasing number of features and ever-increasing performance requirements. Cell phones are a prime example. So, yes, it would be totally impossible to think today that any single group of individuals could reproduce the early Apple era, but that's just life -- things get complicated with time. As a techie I love tinkering with things, and I'm always on the lookout for mainstream electronics which I can hack to get Linux running on them. At the end of the day, though, one has to come to terms with what was pointed out earlier: we are dealing with proprietary hardware. And as much as that may be disappointing, one has to realize that unlike software, one cannot create and spread open-source hardware like one can do with open source software in his basement just using free time -- because all the volunteers in the world cannot mint silicon and fab PCBs and make them available to the rest of humanity. We can convert all we want, but belief doesn't make money grow on trees. Karim -- President / Opersys Inc. Embedded Linux Training and Expertise www.opersys.com / 1.866.677.4546