It seems to me that this incessant desire to use software licencing and a "viewer whitelist" as a lever on downstream viewer developers is an attempt to reduce the costs of managing the behavior of Linden Research's customers.
Obviously Linden Research management believes that doing this wholesale (by bullying developers into crippling functions in their code) rather than retail (detecting and responding to individual customer acts of ToS noncompliance) is a heck of a lot cheaper and easier. The problem with this strategy is that the GPL is specifically designed to prevent such bullying. It further seems clear to me that these policies were announced at the same time as the release of Viewer2 beta in order to distract attention from the power grab. Guess that didn't work as well as hoped. "An entirely sufficient case for open-source development rests on its engineering and economic outcomes—better quality, higher reliability, lower costs, and increased choice." --ESR, in "The Magic Cauldron". We should note that the first three benefits he cites are implicitly not available without the fourth, from which they arise. _______________________________________________ Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/OpenSource-Dev Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges
