Comments on: Freedom vs. Features

By: From the mouths of morons » Blog Archive » compiz on intrepid

From the mouths of morons » Blog Archive » compiz on intrepid — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:34:33 +0000

[...] yes, I admit it. I’m a sell-out, Mr Langridge, a [...]

By: Marty

Marty — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 21:01:07 +0000

While I would like to see free drivers that work as well as the proprietary one’s, to be honest all I really need is proprietary drivers that work. When I began getting involved in networking and comms in the late ’80s the buzzword of choice was “interoperability”. Huge tradeshows were organised so that network vendors could test that their networking equipment could talk to another vendor’s. Initially it was testing physical and datalink layer things - like Ethernet, token ring, token bus and the like. But of course as time wore on you would be testing at a much high layer - things like routing protocols, and load-balancing and the light. The interesting thing is that mostly vendors don’t open their engineering design or code. They merely verify that the standards defined well enough and implemented carefully enough to allow interoperability. And despite this closed source approach, customers still have a huge amount of freedom. They are able to choose between a myriad of network equipment vendors knowing that they can choose a solution that doesn’t lock them into one solution - but they don’t have to demand source code access.

There are now so many things with embedded software and firmware, that you could almost say that it is part of the hardware. I think it is unrealistic for a hardware manufacturer to be forced to show all their intellectual property in the open when there is no clear business benefit to them. But what I do want is an open, unambiguous interfaces into their product - that are not tied to a particular installation platform. In practice what this means for something like a graphics card is that
1. If a card is say AGP that it will plug into my AGP bus and electrical and mechanically work
2. Assuming that I have a Intel/AMD or compatible processor that would provide a low-level driver that exposes all I need to use the card functions/features. This driver must expose all the features/functions indiscriminantly no matter what operating system I choose. This driver can remain closed source as long as it exposes the same interfaces to all that come.
3. My operating system of choice then needs to be able to hook into this low-level driver with a high-level driver that interfaces between the GUI sub-system and the low-level driver. The hardware vendor may choose to develop that high-level driver for particular operating systems. But he should also make sure that he has published the low-level driver interface information well enough such that an open-source high-level driver would be able to easily enough written that performs on par without having to resort to copious amounts of reverse engineering.

While this may be a little naive and simplistic, I also think it is realistic. Demand open interfaces that do not discriminate - this is a battle that can be won and will meet the ends of 99% of us.

By: Paul McLanahan

Paul McLanahan — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 14:27:21 +0000

I don’t necessarily see the problem. Isn’t saying that you can’t have proprietary drivers also limiting freedom? Shouldn’t I be free to make that decision on my own. And following that, shouldn’t free software developers be free to decide how their software should react to the environment in which it winds up running. I couldn’t fault a dev if s/he made a program look all eye-candy-incredible if it detects proprietary ATI drivers, any more than I could fault him or her for crippling the program out of principal when any non-free software is present. It’s their software, and it’s their choice. It then becomes my choice whether or not to support a program that would take either of said courses. I personally have no problem with any way a developer wants to release his or her software. If they free it, that’s great, but if not, then that’s their choice and is also great. It’s then on me again to support it or not. But I don’t believe that all software should be free. I simply believe that all developers and users should be. I would no sooner support forcing software developers to free their code than I would forcing them not to.

By: theOlster

theOlster — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 11:13:16 +0000

I sincerely hope for a Linux split. To see two types of distros - one of the traditional ‘Free’/Geeky type and one that is accessible to the rest of the world. In a way I think this could be a good thing. Most MS and mac users don’t understand the Linux zealotry/philosophy thing and this could be one way into the Linux world. The normal users would then have a distro they could actually use! and the Linux geeks could continue with their whole “Freedom” thingy.

By: Michael Erskine

Michael Erskine — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 09:48:32 +0000

The smoking analogy holds: some people are addicted to the bling but it’s bad for them - I tell this to the kids who have crappy graphics cards. They point out that my machine has the bling to which I reply “Do what daddy says and not what daddy does”!

By: N.

N. — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 09:44:35 +0000

PS Stop smoking!

By: Chris Procter

Chris Procter — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:07:22 +0000

If the end justifies the means then you need to be very sure that the means achieve the ends.

If we could be sure (or even reasonably confident) that using closed drivers would in the long run lead to users and graphics companies “getting it” then thats one thing but I dont see this as likely.

Graphics drivers are at a level in the stack only hardcore techies like ourselves know exist let alone care about and if you dont care about them, and they dont get in your way why would you decide to move to open drivers or put pressure on manufacturers to Free their code.

If users dont apply pressure why would distros develop them, or move to use them if they suddanly sprang into existance, they surely would be better using their limited resources to increase the bling and keep pace with windows/OSX rather then worry about something that already works and the users are happy with. And once we have crossed that line whats to prevent other closed source code being added, because we really need such and such a feature to compete right?

So if these means aren’t going to achieve those ends, why compromise?

Which is my long wided way of saying I agree :)