IRC meeting

[Rob Ubuntu Linux]

On 11/27/07, Ismael Luceno <ismael.luceno at gmail.com> wrote:
> El Mon, 26 Nov 2007 22:12:36 +0000
> "Rob Ubuntu Linux" <rob.ubuntu.linux at googlemail.com> escribió:
>
> > o they open up a FOSS system to binary abuse.  There'd have to be a
> > super-strong case for this feature, before you add it into a key
> > component of system booting by a privilged program.
>
> A GPL licensed program can't be linked to another program under an
> incompatible license, so I don't see the issue here.

So no vendors have violated the GPL ever right?
And dynamic linking via a plugin is going to be regarded as "linking"
in a court of law, which is actually going to really understand the
difference between loading a plugin, and doing a fork/exec?
And there's test cases to show it already, and every court in every
country of the world is going to respect this decision?

Why create a legal dependancy relying on a legal concept "A Software
License"? Which AFAIK is probably difficult to enforce where I live,
as no money exchanged hands there's no contract.

When you can very simply, just "not support plugins" force such binary
peddlars to modify your copyleft-ed source code, and be very clearly
in breach of laws protecting your work.

Now after you've settled out of court with these binary peddlars, do
your users feel happy, or are they upset that their system ran
unreliably and noone could debug it, because of the closed components?

You may feel this is artificial, but remember Linux runs on embedded
devices, and there have been real court cases going on, which are
expensive.

Ultimately there's not been any clear benefit proposed by plugins, by
anything I've seen.  The burden of proof has to be on those proposing
complicated features, to explain why they're worthwhile.