Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2002 09:23:06 -0800 From: "IT3 Stuart Blake Tener, USNR-R" <stuart@bh90210.net> Message-id: <!~!UENERkVCMDkAAQACAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABgAAAAAAAAA6nohIbvp0RGXqACAx8VP1sKAAAAQAAAAdO/2WNipGEe13vGklSJ3IAEAAAAA@bh90210.net> Subject: RE: [suse-sparc] Will there be a SuSE 8.0 for Sparc?
Mr. Owen:
The fact that RedHat does not support the SPARC is not the
issue; the issue is that in general RedHat does not make such commentary
in an insulting way to folks. Telling them what do you expect? You did
not pay anything. And I am on several RedHat lists.
The issue with YAST is not whether it "could be made to work on
BSD" but what does it do? In other words, in your example the postgress
is a product which has been somewhat tweaked to work under SuSE, and
somewhat tweaked to work under BSD. However, its core operational theory
is not at all predicated upon either of those OSes. Whereas the same
argument cannot be made about YAST. If you take YAST, and wish to port
it to BSD, it becomes rather dysfunctional. Sure you can rewrite it to
do so, but its functionality is rather deeply tied to the files in SuSE
being in certain places and it is in fact made for Linux.
Secondly you are incorrectly presuming that I was referring to
the specific fact that it is a derivative work of the kernel. Not what I
was saying. What I was saying is that it is a derivative work of and is
in fact tied to those software packages that are as a whole Linux, many
of which are licensed under the GPL, thus I would presume it is a
derivative work of some several packages, but yet still, even separately
copyrightable, certainly not able to be licensed in the manner SuSE
seems to wish to license it.
Derivative work does not mean does was it source derived from
something else, it means can the product itself be made to function in a
manner which is independent of Linux? In other words, how can one say
that YAST can run on its own, if it is so closely tied to the location
of all the configuration files in Linux? It cannot, unless it is
completely rewritten.
Anyway enough about all this, I was just trying to comment
initially on the fact that the SuSE employees comment that what do you
expect if you didn't pay was both out of the spirit of most Linux
distributors, and was also a rather insulting thing to hear from a
company making its money from the contributions of others whom have not
been paid whatsoever.
Very Respectfully,
Stuart Blake Tener, IT3 (E-4), USNR-R, N3GWG
Beverly Hills, California
VTU 1904G (Volunteer Training Unit)
stuart@bh90210.net
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Sunday, January 13, 2002 4:38 AM
-----Original Message-----
From: Lamar Owen [mailto:lamar.owen@wgcr.org]
Sent: Saturday, March 09, 2002 6:34 PM
To: suse-sparc@suse.com
Subject: Re: [suse-sparc] Will there be a SuSE 8.0 for Sparc?
On Friday 08 March 2002 10:44 pm, IT3 Stuart Blake Tener, USNR-R wrote:
> Your theorem is completely misplaced. I have joined many RedHat
> lists and gotten responses from RedHat employees and never paid a
dime,
> though they do appreciate my taking the time to inform them of the
> issues with their documentation or code they wrote (something no SuSE
> employee, that I have seen, has ever done here thus far).
You're not on many Red Hat lists, then. I'm on one (the very name of
which I
can't say due to my NDA with Red Hat as a beta tester) where a message
such
as yours would have been laughed at.
Oh, and Red Hat doesn't support SPARC anymore. But, if you are so
inclined,
check out the Aurora project -- and see what sort of response you will
get.
RedHat's dropping of SPARC support wasn't very popular. At least SuSE
has
_something_ you can use. If you don't like it, use Solaris then. Or
help
correct the problems. Or just be quiet if you'renot going to be
constructive
about it.
> I must admit, I am not a lawyer, but I do believe that the lack
> of YAST's GPLness, is in fact a violation of the GPL. It is (as I
> understand it) a derivative work. In other words, YAST has no
> functionality if you remove Linux. Therefore, as I understand it YAST
is
> a derivative work, and ought be properly licensed according to the
> stipulations of the GPL as it applies to Linux.
Yast could probably be made work on a *BSD kernel. RPM works on such a
kernel; SuSE could potentially replace the Linux kernel with something
else
with some effort. Therefore, your understanding is incorrect. You
simply
have a misunderstanding of 'derivative work' as used in copyright law in
the
US.
You going to ask the PostgreSQL developers to change to GPL because it
has no
functionality apart from the kernel? (PostgreSQL is BSD licensed) Go
ahead
and post a message to that effect on pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org. And
get
flamed. And PostgreSQL is in SuSE.
Does Yast make _any_ direct use of the Linux kernel? (I'll answer with
a
tentative NO as Yast, like most programs, uses the standard C library,
implemented on top of the kernel using glibc. Yast could just as easily
use
the OpenBSD libc on the OpenBSD kernel. Yast is not a derivative work
of the
Linux kernel. Sorry.
> There is a fifth bug, a dma error that occurs on the Ethernet
> (happy meal) board when a large amount of network traffic flows on the
> board. I personally tested and experienced this, and no such problem
> exists when the same level of data is pumped using Solaris, thus, it
is
> not a hardware problem.
No, it is a kernel problem. Not even a SuSE problem. Talk to the linux
kernel mailing list. :-)
-- Lamar Owen WGCR Internet Radio 1 Peter 4:11-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: suse-sparc-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands, e-mail: suse-sparc-help@suse.com
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