It would not be improper to say that "such and such a lawyer said this
and that." I'm not proposing that you breach their copyright in their
opinions, but there is such a thing as fair use, and I expect you to use
it or stop bringing it up. Anything less than that starts to sound odd.
Various reasons. I don't know that you're a liar and I'm too much the
gentleman to accuse you of that without being quite sure of my facts.
As it happens I assume you're not lying, but I do suspect you of having
misrepresented what was said to you. I don't say you've done this out
of malice; it's possible you've read things into opinions given to you
that weren't meant; or even inaccurately remembered what was said.
Mostly, I think what I've already said: In other words, I think you've
put a spin on the opinions in pursuit of your own agenda. You've
already watered down your claims, being that you now say, "bad idea".
Okay, that I understand. That is simple. But it's irrelevant to the
topic under discussion, which is to seek to restrict access to modules
based on their specific licence conditions. The GPL makes no such
restriction, and it is improper and legally meaningless, from a licence
point of view, to claim that EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL forms a condition of
licence. It doesn't. (There may be DMCA considerations, but I hope
that everyone from Stallman to Torvalds would hasten to disclaim them.)
Please don't refer to me in this way. Say, rather, "if someone wants to
do binary products." Putting that aside, Linux is such a product.
There is nothing in the GPL that suggests it may not be used with
proprietary products, and much to say that it may.
Presumably you mean "product," and not "model of software development,"
since later in no way relates to the topic. The market will ultimately
decide which product is right. It would be a great shame if Linux
dwindled. There's no shortage of fully open source operating systems,
but the one enjoying success which requires source to be distributed
with (hardware) product is Linux. I don't want that to change. I make
purchasing decisions for clients based on availability of source. BSD
isn't useful. Annex used BSD (there was no GPL) and their product was
poorer for it. I don't particularly like binary drivers, but I like
binary-only operating systems even less.
There's no need to play brinksmanship with manufacturers. Please don't
take Linux away from my router, and my modem, and my access point, and
my telephone, and my printer.
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