/me waits in baited anticipation of some of the opencores stuff to get moving ..... ;p
Dale. ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, July 05, 2004 10:29 PM Subject: Re: nvidia on slashdot > On Mon, 05 Jul 2004 22:10:59 +1200 > Nick Rout <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > <ethical philosophy lecture> > > > Open Source advocates say that the argument is about the quality of the > > > resultant code. (a consequentialist or utilitarian view) > > > The Free Software Foundation say that it is morally wrong to buy, write > > > or sell proprietary software. (a deontological or Kantian approach) > > > </ethical philosophy lecture> > > > > > > this is where it gets difficult for me, are you also saying that an > > author of a book should not get royalties of be able to have copyright > > protection? where is the difference? people train to become > > programmers, and some become good at it. they write software. why > > shouldn't they sell it if they want to? i don't see how it can be > > immoral, as long as people have an effective choice about whether to use > > it. > > > > choice about whether to use it probably means that it should stick to > > some standard, like an rfc or whatever, or publish its api. > > mmm tonite I must have time to spare ;) > I'd stay away from moral and I'd rather talk about ethics, but it's not necessary > IMHO to invoke ethics either :) They sell hardware not a software product, > so the whole book writer argument doesn't apply. A driver for a fast evolving product like > linux should not be binary, if they value their IP (laugh) more than the cost of maintaining the binary driver > minus revenues from linux user, well good for them... they will not have meeeeeee ;) > > cheers > -- > Delio > >
