Hallo, Jan Depner hat gesagt: // Jan Depner wrote: > On Sat, 2004-11-27 at 15:36, Lee Revell wrote: > > IMO the issue is not whether RME's concern is valid - clearly it is. > > Sorry, but arguing otherwise makes us look stupid and naive. The issue > > is how to address this concern. If that means a closed source Linux > > driver, fine. > > > > Man, I've been waiting all day for someone to say this. Personally, > open source is not a religion for me so a closed source driver would be > fine and dandy. Let the flames commence - now where did I put my > asbestos underwear? Closed source drivers are *the* evil force threatening open source and free software. Closed source drivers means no open source drivers, that's a simple fact. Why? Because with the availability of closed drivers the (market) demand for open source drivers suddenly becomes as small as the handful of Libre Software supporters like I am one. The "just make my hardware work" type of Linux users is not interested in Open Source drivers anymore, so why should someone still write this kind of drivers? NVidia is the prime example. They provide closed source drivers, a lot of (probably most) users are happy about this, NVidia makes millions of dollars also in the Linux market. No free software drivers? Bah, who the heck cares? And who the heck cares, that you cannot buy a single modern 3D-card anymore, which has open source drivers, by any manufacturer? Oh, that's not the fault of the linux community, Matrox simply sucks, they don't provide binary only drivers, NVidia rulez. If RME doesn't want to support Linux for their FW card, that's fine with me. There are still enough alternatives. But think about this: There are no alternatives in the graphics card market anymore. Think about, why this situation is so? In this regard, providing closed source drivers and not providing docs is even worse than not providing specifications only. It's a trojan horse, and a big part of the Linux community bites it. "Just working" may be enough for most users, but it is not enough for me. And that's not because I would be an RMS zealot (at least, RMS is smart enough, to not let the Trojan horse in). It's simply, what decades of open source history have told those, who know about it: It's not Linux, that's the threat to the Big Bosses, it's the idea of Free Software. Ciao -- Frank Barknecht _ ______footils.org__
