Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265179AbUD3SSO (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Apr 2004 14:18:14 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265193AbUD3SSO (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Apr 2004 14:18:14 -0400 Received: from kinesis.swishmail.com ([209.10.110.86]:9220 "EHLO kinesis.swishmail.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265179AbUD3SSE (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Apr 2004 14:18:04 -0400 Message-ID: <4092997A.3090906@techsource.com> Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 14:22:50 -0400 From: Timothy Miller MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Marc Boucher CC: Chris Friesen , Sean Estabrooks , david@gibson.dropbear.id.au, Jeff Garzik , riel@redhat.com, koke@sindominio.net, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, torvalds@osdl.org, Tigran Aivazian , rusty@rustcorp.com.au, paul@wagland.net Subject: Re: [PATCH] Blacklist binary-only modules lying about their license References: <40927417.6040100@nortelnetworks.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3401 Lines: 83 Marc Boucher wrote: > > Chris, > > people should, before insulting us publicly or make unsubstantiated > claims that we "lie" or engage in "illegal" actions, perhaps consult a > lawyer, and simultaneously use the opportunity to enquire about the > meaning of "slander". > > I repeat, the \0 is purely a technical workaround, done without any > mischievous intent. Your intent only matters slightly. Consider how courts would deal with you killing someone: (a) If you intended to kill someone and killed them, you are convicted of murder or manslaughter (depending on the nature of the intent, etc.) (b) If you did NOT intend to kill someone but could have prevented it, you get convicted of gross neglegence. (c) If you did not intend to kill someone and there is no way you could have prevented it, you are found not guilty. In your case, it seems that you did not intend to break the law, but you did, AND you should have known that this was an iffy thing to do, and you could have done more research to find out that you should not do it. That would qualify you for (b), neglegence. So, the fact that you didn't MEAN to do anything wrong doesn't absolve you of the crime. It just means that your crime is different (and less severe) from what it would have been if you'd meant to break the law. No one is arguing your intent. I, and probably many others, buy your argument that you didn't MEAN to cause any harm. You can tell us how much you didn't mean it until you're blue in the face, and that's not going to change anything, because we already BELIEVE you. What you don't seem to understand is that what you did was wrong ANYWAY. Some other points you miss: - There is nothing slanderous about what we're saying. What you did is illegal. Period. - We're not telling you to stop what you're doing in general. We're only telling you to fix the one thing that you did wrong so that we can all move on. - The only reason people keep harping on you about this is because you keep missing the point that what you did was a bad thing, regardless of why you did it. What you did is kinda like the situation where some kid uses Kazaa to download songs, but he doesn't realize that it's illegal. He doesn't understand or appreciate the harm he's causing, because he doesn't see how copying something (without taking away the original) could be a problem. He doesn't understand that there's a big different beween real property and intellectual property. You seem to share a similar difficulty in understanding the harm that you're causing because so much of it is very abstract. To further the analogy, we on LKML are acting like a "nice" version of the RIAA; a nice RIAA would find someone who is pirating music, find out that they didn't realize it was wrong, educate them, and ask them to please stop pirating. We are not telling you that we want to have you convicted of copyright violation; we are telling you that you are committing copyright violation, and we want you to please stop. The fact that you didn't realize it wasn't wrong doesn't make it not wrong for you to do it. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/