From: xx xx <Matthias.Klumpp_at_gmx.de>
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 17:15:04 +0100 (MET)

> Matthias Klumpp wrote:
> > I suppose they will take the open source SW, re-write it or restructure
> it and then put a own copyright on it.
>
> No, they can't. Rockbox will _always_ be open source, since it is licensed
> under the GPL. No person or company can close the source.

Well IMHO you are theoretically right.
I was thinking in something like: The company ignores any licenses and
RESTRUCTURES the SW.
Afterwards it will probably be difficult to prove, that the original source
was Rockbox....
(Think in stuff like e.g. car design....)

> > I think (long term) this has a big risc to kill the open source project
> > team.
>
> I don't. Not any more than Red Hat and SUSE has killed Linux.

Well every time there are positive and negative examples ;-))) To be honest
I don't know none with the "killing" scenario...

> The difference between software and hardware is that software is just
> ideas while hardware is physical matter. This means hardware will always
have a
> cost for production and distribution that software doesn't. It also means
> hardware is much much more difficult to patch and modify ad inifitum.

Correct. Even you need to think about these "poor" HW developers who want to
share their HW sending around the world to make it accessible for other
developers.
But this is (of course) a principle problem. If one is interested in
developing HW, one has to accept that kind of problems.


One thing could be an advantage.
HW normally changes a lot in the beginning of 1st prototypes, but then gets
much more stable than SW.
Means all that disadvantages (you/I mentioned above) are (mostly) of
temporary nature.

Matthias

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Received on 2004-03-25