Quoting Oleg Goldshmidt, from the post of Wed, 15 Jan:
> 
> "[Transmeta] claims its approach offers increased security for wireless
> computing, protects sensitive data, "deters intellectual property
> theft" (read Digital Rights Management (DRM) Inside) and delivers
> tamper-resistant, x86 storage environments."

First off Linus is into the microcode compiler, not into hardware design
(if I remember correctly). he DOES try to steer away from politics, and
that CAN be a problem. it's one thing to "sit on the fence" on some
issues, but it's an entirely different issue to belittle the opinions of
others. As RMS once mentioned hen he recieved the "Linus Torvals Award",
that it's like the Rebel fleet getting the Han Solo award.

as for him being a traitor - as RMS puts it, he's like the national
printers' association - any license is respected and allowed to live
along the others, and prefering one product or technology on the other
should be done according to technical standards, rather than licensing.
signing an NDA and working with "problematic" licenses is not concern.
RMS on the other hand has stated that he is more interested in freedom
than advancing technology or creativity. I'm somewhere in the middle
between the two, as I believe technology SHOULD move ahead AND remain
free. RMS agrees on that, as I heard him answer at the IBM talk that
it's ok for id software to sell propriatary code which they intend to
release as free at a later time - "but not too late so it does not
become obsolete and doesn't help people anymore once it's published".

The problem that the "Treacherous Computing" is that it will stop you
from running free software on proprietary OS (which many people do), in
fact it would probably stop you from running many types of freewares and
sharewares on Windows if their authors can't afford the signing
procedure and enter the selective, closed circle of "trusted software",
which means paying a higher "Microsoft tax" may actually deter people
from publishing software in general, not to mention free software.

Now Vadik, if you still think Treacherous Computing is not dangerous,
just wait and see how it will effect you, even in your "protected" BSD
world...

I don't think Linus is a traitor, he just cares too little about
freedom, and I hope DRM/Paladium-like features never make it into the
main kernel (though I have no doubt that if the hardware platform will
succeed on MS, some heartless hardware vendor may actually offer a
kernel tree with such features).

-- 
Apropos of nothing
Ira Abramov

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