On Fri, 2007-04-06 at 10:22 -0400, ericfurman@fastmail.net wrote:
quoted text
> They stated that they don't want Broadcom to take their work and close
> it. Why do they care? What possible difference does it make?
> Broadcom will get a driver that actually works well?
> They're not going to make any money off their work on the Broadcom
> driver (the GPL nonsense makes sure of that) so why do they give
> a flying f*** *what* Broadcom does with their code?

Speaking as someone who has read more of the gnu.org and fsf.org Web
sites and (probably) listened to Richard Stallman speeches than most of
the OpenBSD user community:

Nothing in the GPL prohibits commercial use of code released under the
GPL. It is perfectly fine to sell copies of GPLed code at any price.
What is *not* perfectly fine is to sell copies of GPLed code without
allowing access to the source code.

The GPL is not about limiting commerical use of software. The GPL is
about preserving freedom (i.e. "share and share alike"). The GNU Ada
compiler is commerical software, which also happens to be released under
the GPL.

(It is worth noting that even Richard Stallman himself understands that
the GPL and LGPL are not always the best choices. One example of this:
<http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/icecast-dev/2001-February/000005.html>)

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn <skquinn@speakeasy.net>