Peter Köhlmann wrote:
> They still aren't affected by it. As long as they don't use GPLed code, it
> is of no concern to them.
> And even *if* they would start with GPLed code, they have always the
> possibility to branch a GPL2 code release and do a fork of their own.
> *That* would be a detriment to GPL3, because then we would suddenly have 2
> different, and license wise incompatible, forks of code
>
That is or was my main worry today, that we seem to now have a situation
where folking is not only possible, but very likely.
It has the potential to end up in a mess, but actually I wonder if it also
has the potential to create two very distinc Linux-like systems, I know
that would be easy to dismiss as a rediculous situation, but as the day
goes on I'm starting to wonder if it really would be bad for Linux to have
two camps. I know we could already say that we have two/three main camps,
but I was thinking of it being allowed to go further than that.
I have never really been in favour of a single do-it-all OS and I don't
really care where the competition comes from MS, Mac, another Linux or an
OS that hasn't yet arrived. Just so long as the competition all have a good
basic level of safety and security for it's users.
I just believe that it is better for inovation to have different platforms
to inspire different sorts of minds. We all know of the flurry of activity
and speed of development in the early days of computers at home, much of
that was of cause that they was so much to be done that it was easy to be
inspired into putting something into it.
But, and I'd bet my left sock that you did this too, many of us would change
computers for no other reason than the new one was completely different to
the previous computers we had programmed for. So if you had never
programmed for Spectrum or Commadore, one of those is likely to be your
next computer.
In short we were inspired by the fact that it wasn't a familiar platform.
Even the excitement posted in here as users try another distro, they enjoy
it, enjoy learning, even enjoy the fights and frustrations if they end up
in trouble trying to get some peripheral or application to work. So I think
that inspiration that many of us felt all those years ago is still present
in the new or young men/women that come to Linux, just different distros
might not be enough to sustain that, maybe we do need some more folks.
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