[clue-talk] Re: [clue-tech] The latest Debian feud - worth a read

[Brian Gibson]

Taking graphic drivers as an example.

- I can get an Nvidia card and use the nv driver on Linux and get a 2D display minus 3D acceleration or hardware accelerated video
- Alternatively, I can use the proprietary Nvidia for driver and get full 2D/3D acceleration but no hardware accelerated video.  Same goes for the ATI proprietary driver.
- To get all the features I can dual-boot into Windows.
- Or I can wait for the open source ATI driver to implement all the missing features using the recently published specs ATI graciously provided.  
- If I don't want to wait, I could theoretically help write the driver except a) I don't have any experience writing graphic drivers and b) I don't have any desire to learn because it's not of any interest to me.  Personally, I like high-level programming.

So depending on the applications I need the graphics card, I'll go with the system configuration that best fits its use regardless of the permutation: (non-)free software on a (non-)free operating system.

It would be nice if all companies would take a queue from Intel and open source their drivers, but Nvidia/ATI are free to do what they want.  Personally, I think it would be advantageous to everyone both company and consumer if drivers were open sourced, but unless I'm on the board of said company, my opinion means little except when it comes to purchasing.

GPL software is awesome.  What happened with the Linksys router stands as a good example.  I'm sure it didn't hurt Linksys/Cisco's bottom line when the WRT54GL won the Newegg Customer Choice award 18 times.  That said, any author of software can license it however they want including _not_ licensing it and putting it in the public domain.

In summary, Free > Non-Free when non-free doesn't save me money or time.  Non-Free > Free when free doesn't have a feature I want and I'm not willing to wait or implement it myself.




----- Original Message ----
From: "dennisjperkins at comcast.net" <dennisjperkins at comcast.net>
To: CLUE talk <clue-talk at cluedenver.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 31, 2008 1:07:05 PM
Subject: Re: [clue-talk] Re: [clue-tech] The latest Debian feud - worth a read


-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Brian Gibson <bwg1974 at yahoo.com>
> > Collins Richey wrote:
> > > http://thunk.org/tytso/blog/2008/12/28/debian-philosophy-and-people/
> > 
> > Yes,
> I'm a zealot, though not particularly wild-eyed. ;-)  Could we move
> this to Talk?  That seems a more appropriate forum to me.
> > 
> > Thanks for your consideration.
> > Dave
> 
> I'm a pragmatist.  I want the _freedom_ to install free _and_ non-free software 
> where I feel each is appropriate.  What I wouldn't give for a native binary for 
> Adobe products and games, for example.  In any case, ship a fully compliant free 
> distribution of Debian.  Please just include the easy button to install non-free 
> software.  It can't be all that hard to make a meta-package to add a repository 
> of non-free software and then install a list of commonly installed and 
> recommended software because the fact remains, free software hasn't filled all 
> the holes of non-free software... yet.  Graphics drivers stick out like a sore 
> thumb in this regard.  And just for fairness, the proprietary graphics drivers 
> fall short of features when compared to their counterparts on other OSes; 
> hardware accelerated video, where are you?  Include the free software manifesto 
> as a popup when the user clicks the button for all I care.  The majority will 
> pay as much attention to
>  that as they do to the EULA that ships with non-free software.
> 
> 
> 
>      
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ATI drivers might not be a problem much longer.  AMD has been releasing information on the ATI chips, so the quality of the free ATI drivers should improve rapidly.

I don't know that I consider myself a zealot, but I stand with Dave in this.  The purpose of the GPL is to keep the source for programs open and available to programmers.  That users benefit from this is a priceless side effect.  Any improvements to GPLed programs cannot wall them off from the software commons, to borrow a phrase from Lessig. 
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