2008/6/25 Laurent Blume <laurent at opensolaris.org>: > Shawn Walker a ?crit : >> It's pretty clear what licensing applies where. Though I agree that >> information could be better consolidate into a single place. > > Yes, it would help, even more when the term ?OpenSolaris? is used > indiscriminately to talk about the project or the distro. > The nVidia drivers (a very good example indeed) are not part of the > project, and yet they're part of the distro. > > So when somebody says ?the nVidia drivers are part of OpenSolaris?, it > can be either completely true or completely untrue depending on what the > reader thinks ?OpenSolaris? is. > > Such confusion doesn't help.
I don't think it really matters though. Again, I attribute this to a vocal minority. >> By participating in the community. Jason King, as a community member, >> volunteered to replace the SPARC disassembler. John Sonnenschein, as a >> community member, volunteered to help replace parts of libc. >> >> There is a list of exactly which components are closed and members of >> the community can volunteer to replace them in almost every case. > > nVidia? Flash? Acrobat reader? (yes, not here yet, but I bet it will get > in OpenSolaris as soon as it ships). > > Those are what matter for most people. SPARC assembler and those ce > NICs, well, some people need them, but honestly, you won't get a > headline out of those. Yes, but the point here was that the components that actually make the system "bootstrappable on its own" can be replaced by volunteers. I wasn't referring to third-party components that are not necessary for the system to function. >> Right, but Ubuntu and many other distributions do the same thing. > > Do they? The opposite was said on the thread, and I have to admit, > Ubuntu doesn't seem to support their use very much: Yes, they distribute "non-free" components, even in their default installation. That's why "Gnewsense", etc. exist. > And I remember that even them were criticized for doing that in the past. They have been. It came up with video drivers and wireless drivers very recently. > Actually, I haven't seen distro installing non-free software > out-of-the-box in a long time, but I'm not much into Linux distros. They do have non-free components, even in the default setup. That's why Gnewsense, etc. was created. If you ask Stallman, even if they don't include non-free components in the default setup, if they make them easily available by default, that's just as bad. The FreeBSD project was certainly criticised for it with their ports system. >> It's the same thing every other GNU/Linux distribution has to contend >> with. I personally don't feel like its an issue worth addressing. > > They have an established base much larger than ours. They're not anymore > in the starting blocks. We, on the other hand, should ensure that > adoption isn't slowed by such discussions. I don't think our adoption is going to be dependent on satisfying a "vocal minority." Individuals believe that this issue is important should join the Emancipation CG. I'd rather spend my time improving packaging, etc. >> However, I'm more interested in providing a great experience than >> licensing quibbles. > > I completely agree. A unique point of reference for those licensing > things, as you suggested, would certainly help to solve those quibbles. It's not going to solve them, but it may help allay some perhaps somewhat misguided concerns. -- Shawn Walker
