Date: Wed, 18 Apr 2001 01:27:24 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Rahul Siddharthan" <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> Cc: "David Johnson" <djohnson@acuson.com>, <freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Windriver, Slackware and FreeBSD Message-ID: <007201c0c7e1$65489b00$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <20010418091652.A27000@lpt.ens.fr>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: Rahul Siddharthan [mailto:rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in] > >I agree that it's difficult, in principle, to fault them for it. >Nevertheless, I was uneasy about the takeover and what it means for >FreeBSD, and this news will make many people uneasy if they weren't >already. Because Wind River's only motivation is to be able to close >the source if they want to. > The BSD/OS source was never open to start with - unless of course you purchased the product, in which case it's source came with BSDI. Now, the BSD source that BSDI itself was based on was open, and you can argue that BSDI was thus open because of that, but that's not really the case. >Consider the following scenario: Apple has a patent on some very >low-level algorithm, but doesn't tell people. (They do claim a patent >on theming, so why not on some OS-related thing?) Their people (no >doubt well-meaning) contribute it to FreeBSD. The second that an Apple employee formally contributed patented source to FreeBSD, it would tremendously weaken the Apple patent to the point where it would impede it's enforceability. It gets into -current, >then into a stable release, becomes well entrenched into the OS. Then >the legal people at Apple decide that FreeBSD has no right to >distribute this patented stuff for free, and threaten to sue. > It would take a couple years before becoming well entrenched, and if Apple waited that long before doing anything about it, the patent would be virtually unenforceable. Anyway, FreeBSD already went through this with AT&T. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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