---- Original message ----
>Date: Sat, 07 Oct 2006 14:55:22 -0600
>From: Theo de Raadt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: Letter to OLPC
>To: Adriaan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Cc: [email protected]
>
>> On 10/5/06, Theo de Raadt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> > I have decided to make public this letter which I sent to the OLPC
>> > ("One Laptop Per Child" group, which is strongly associated with Red
>> > Hat.
>> [snip]
>>
>> See Jim Gettys defense at http://www.gettysfamily.org/wordpress/?p=27
>
>He cleverly avoids the entire issue I brought up --
>
> Non-disclosure agreements with chip vendors result
> in source code drivers which cannot be maintained
> later because the documentation is not available
> to those who would wish to maintain the driver.
>
>Jim is obviously very clever at convincing people that children need
>proprietary laptops (OLPC has a greater percentage of undocumented
>hardware than a Thinkpad from 3 years ago). It is easy for Jim to
>convince people these things because he doesn't care at all about the
>future maintainance of drivers. I do. And I think most of you also
>do.
>
>(Somewhere else Jim basically said in about 2 years they are likely to
>choose another chip, and then all their developers with documentation
>under NDA will ... I guess stop maintaining the Linux Marvell driver)
>
how else do you expect the OPLC project to transition these kids into eventually
paying for technology? if they could have the machine run indefinitely, it would
threaten what i see as the real goal of the OPLC project: marketing to
disadvantaged people in hopes they will buy stuff later.
stating that OPLC is a "non-profit" when it promotes use of proprietary hardware
on which only certain OSes will run is absurd. a "non-profit" that promotes safe
sex via condom use is indirectly generating profit for condom manufacturers and
likely acquires funding therefrom. this is a conflict of interest, IMO, with one
organization claiming "we just want everyone to be having {safe sex, computer
access, babies, etc.}" and someone else who funds such an organization profiting
and the non-profit receiving kickbacks. a company being a non-profit does not
mean people don't make money, only that employee salaries and what the company
can "own" is limited.
>Every posting from him mentions the children, as a way to encourage
>people to believe him. You can't say anything bad about the children,
>can you? But behind that mention of the children, look -- here is a
>Red Hat employeee spouting the same proprietary balony we hear all the
>time from vendors like Intel and Broadcom.
