During the bombing raid on Sun, 21 Jan 2001 17:21:26 -0600, Ed Wilts was heard
mumbling in fear::
> "Due to certain legal liabilities and for the protection of intellectual
> property, Matrox reserves licensing rights to the library and prohibits
> reverse engineering but allows free distribution under any operating system.
> Matrox encourages members of the open source community to freely distribute
> and assist in the further development of this driver."
And they think that somebody in the open source/free software community
is actually going to help them improve a driver under this conditions? ha! fat
chance!
> Even though the driver they ship is definitely not GPL, neither is Netscape
> and Mandrake has no problems shipping it.
I happen to *strongly* agree with mandrake in their position about
closed source drivers, even if it means I have to go grab the nvidia drivers
from the nvidia site to get my card going properly. Then again, I don't depend
on X to be able to go grab stuff off the net, since I can do it from console
with no prob at all.
On the other hand, when they say that they prohibit reverse engineering
they are not only going against your freedom (according to the FSF/GNU
definition) but against the law in most (if not all) countries. So....f them.
Vox
--
Pain is the gift of the gods, and I'm the one they chose as their messenger....
For info on safety in the BDSM lifestyle http://www.the-vox.com
Think of the Linux community as a niche economy isolated by its beliefs. Kind
of like the Amish, except that our religion requires us to use _higher_
technology than everyone else. -- Donald B. Marti Jr.
Vox populi, vox deii....
