On Wed, 2006-01-18 at 06:15, Andy Green wrote:
What I don't really understand is how you go *poof* out of the market when you sell gadgets that need a open source driver ? People still would have to by the gadget, wouldn't they ?
The worry is that when much of what makes the gadget innovative is tied up in the code that must be opened, people will indeed still buy the gadget, but perhaps not from the original author of the opened code...
Or, the gadget depends on code already written and under another license. The GPL is all-or-nothing in this regard so if any component (with some interpretation of components...) needs a non-GPL license, none can have it. Personally I think this is indefensibly anti-competitive. Imagine if Microsoft said that if you used any 3rd party DLLs along with their code the 3rd party code suddenly become controlled by Microsoft's license. I'm not a lawyer, and even if I were I wouldn't risk a business on that interpretation, but there is just something wrong with the concept that you can't combine different products to add value.