On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 2:07 PM, Cornelius <[email protected]> wrote:

> On 05/22/2009 02:56 PM, Glen Gray wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 2009-05-22 at 08:27 -0400, Ryan VanMiddlesworth wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Greg KH<[email protected]>  wrote:
>>>
>>>> What was bizarre and obtuse about my comments?  Is it wrong for me to
>>>> wish to have peopel abide by the license of my contribution to the
>>>> kernel?
>>>>
>>> I'm not particularly interested in dragging this out, but you asked,
>>> so here's how I saw it go down:
>>>
>>> The guy shows up and helpfully posts directions and files for getting
>>> Moblin's wireless working on one of the most popular netbooks out
>>> there (the Dell Mini 9).  We all know Broadcom has a misguided policy
>>> on copyright, and what most people would have said is, "Thanks for
>>> your effort, but you're not technically allowed to distribute that
>>> driver because it contains a binary blob."  Case closed.
>>>
>>> Instead, you decide to drag out some sort of passive-aggressive public
>>> shaming ritual over the course of several emails.  What was
>>> particularly annoying to me is that usually this sort of treatment is
>>> reserved for new users of open source software (sadly).  You, however,
>>> decided it was a necessary tactic in dealing with some poor guy who is
>>> simply trying to contribute to the project.
>>>
>>
>> Ryan,
>>
>> I appreciate the support. I do. But I'm not so naive to not have known
>> what Greg was going on about from the get go. Yes, his passive
>> aggressive approach was a strange one to take. I simply played along
>> getting him to spell it out hoping as many people would get to nab the
>> drivers along the way.
>>
>> I certainly took no offense to his request. He has made significant
>> contributions to the Linux kernel that we all love to use and is
>> entitled to make the request under the terms of the license. That's why
>> I took it down without any protest. The finger of blame here is easy to
>> point to Greg, but if you follow it through it should go all the way
>> back to Broadcom.
>>
>> There's a howto for those of use unfortunate enough to have a broadcom
>> driver issue, hopefully it's easy to follow. If anyone has suggestions
>> for changes to the HowTo I'm all ears.
>>
>> Kind Regards,
>>
> What I simply don't understand here is why Greg doesn't sue Broadcom (the
> root of all evil ;)) but instead he's fighting against the 'small players'
> and the users who would just like to use WLAN and who have bought some
> broadcom chipset. This certainly doesn't improve anything in regards to the
> copyright issue except that we now have some annoyed users more.


What should happen is for users/customers to complain to Broadcom for the
state of affairs with the network drivers, and possibly avoid buying
hardware that have unsupported hardware.

If someone is really "uninitiated" in open-source development and new to the
field, they would probably lose interest in open-source software (from
Greg's initial response).
What should Greg do is use canned responses in these situations or simply
delegate the replying to the rest of the list.

Simos
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