Comments on: Why Solaris should adopt GPLv2

By: Don Marti

Don Marti — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 18:59:59 +0000

To me, the most important rationale behind GPLv3 is standardization, to get the ability to borrow code from previously incompatible licenses. Don’t worry about Linux and other GPLv2 projects that are already thriving — the real impact will come when the project of the future that can use code originally released under GPLv2 or later, Apache and Eclipse licenses.

By: tecosystems » links for 2007-02-05

tecosystems » links for 2007-02-05 — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 05:26:07 +0000

[…] Ian Murdock’s Weblog » Blog Archive » Why Solaris should adopt GPLv2 i’m actually for this as well, but i’d bet it will not happen (tags: GPLv2 Murdock drivers Solaris OpenSolaris) […]

By: James

James — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 02:08:41 +0000

Linux and Solaris have such different device models it’d be much easier to just reimplement drivers for one using the other as a reference, in which case it doesn’t matter about v2 vs v3. Further, if there is code that can be shared, you can always ask the author directly to co-license under v3 (not everyone is Linus).

By: Bart

Bart — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 22:08:34 +0000

Linux device driver layer doesn’t really exist, or if it did, it just cahnged — 2.6.20 is out! Solaris like things that last for decades w/o change. Linux changes from month to month. It would be very hard to take drivers from linux into another OS expecting it to just work. You might as well port the drivers. Yes, that would still require a license that permits such a thing.

By: Ian Murdock

Ian Murdock — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 16:24:59 +0000

I agree. However, that’s not likely to happen any time soon either. -ian

By: Bob

Bob — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 15:12:07 +0000

In a world of standards, drivers are made by users. There is something fundamentally mistaken with this. Drivers should be delivered by the manufacturers, be open, up to date, and generic. By “generic” I mean that if you have five scanners, you should not install five drivers, but just one; each scanner should interface with a generic, high quality driver, which runs essentially identical in all platforms.