TriNetre - Archive for October 17, 2003
(no longer updated)
Looks like Daniel Lyons of Forbes is apologising in his own way through "Follow-Up To Linux's Hit Men" for his rather stupid and immature article "Linux's Hit Men". I guess anyone will, when you get over 260 replies, all criticising the article logically and validly.
The case is amazingly simple. A company called Linksys made a wireless router that uses chipset from another company Broadcom. Now this chipset contains code released under GPL, maybe modified, maybe not. As per GPL license, if you use any GPLed code, even if it is a derivative of the original, you have to release the code under GPL. Linksys did not do this. Another company Cisco bought over Linksys. When Free Software Foundation (FSF) found out that the the router that Cisco (now) makes contains GPL codes and that Cisco had not released the code under GPL too, it told Cisco to either remove the code completely or release the code.
For this, Daniel Lyons of Forbes (no less) calls FSF "Linux's Hit Men"! For what? For protecting their IP rights. He says:Yes, even if GPL/FSF is "charging a royalty that approaches 100% of the value of the licensee's product", they have full right to do it. Even though his original article called FSF "Hit Men" for this, in his "apology" he agrees "Yes, the FSF is entitled to do this". Hmm.. so what exactly is his problem? Oh yes, his concern is "But is that good for Linux?". Sure Lyons, whatever will save your bruised ego.
Who gave this guy the job at Forbes?
This week CircleID carried some nice articles:
- In Memory of Jon Postel
- Is Industry Underestimating the Ending Dot?
- SECSAC Special Meeting on Site Finder: A Technical Analysis
- Apple launches iTunes for Windows
- I read the news at Slashdot
- Download and install
- Search, play around a bit
- Uninstall
- Time wasted - 5 minutes
