Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> ____/ Mark Kent on Wednesday 08 August 2007 09:21 : \____
>
>> Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>>> ____/ Mark Kent on Tuesday 07 August 2007 18:11 : \____
>>>
>>>> waterskidoo <water.skidoo@xxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>>>>> On 2007-08-06, Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I sometimes see positive reviews, but at the end they turn out to have
>>>>>> come from people who are affiliated with Microsoft. Usually it's a story
>>>>>> about "getting used to" and "find some new applications to replace old
>>>>>> ones", which is similar the the whole "death tidal wave" that affects
>>>>>> Vista-incapable hardware, DRM-ed content (expiry/different DRM
>>>>>> 'universe'), and Microsoft Office documents that are incompatible (even
>>>>>> across versions of the _same software_).
>>>>>
>>>>> The people who seem to be having success with Vista are those with new
>>>>> machines who don't venture outside the box. IOW little or no older
>>>>> shrink wrap or oddball hardware to be installed on the new pre
>>>>> loaded Vista machines.
>>>>> The upgraders are having the most problems and the more complex the
>>>>> hardware and software, the more problems these people are having.
>>>>
>>>> But you were saying how good the "professional" drivers were - part of
>>>> Roy's posting was the problems with nVidia cards. Care to retract?
>>>>
>>>> I suspect you won't.
>>>
>>> Let is rest, Mark. NVidia cards are not the biggest issue at the moment.
>>> Actually, neither is userbase. It's the next-generation of lockins, backed
>>> by Microsoft 'partners' that is the greatest threat to freedom, IMHO.
>>>
>>
>> Oh, I have; I've put her in the killfile now.
>
> What?!?!
Well, what I said, really. I can't be doing with people who use such
trolling techniques with such great abandon. Maybe I'll un-kfile her in
the future, maybe not. Better that than to allow the pollution of the
group with irrational rants, prods, insults, pokes and so on.
>
>> By the way, though, don't underestimate the dangers of binary drivers in
>> terms of achieving lock-in.
>
> Yes, but...
>
Consider this - Acer, HP, Dell and Lenovo all offer Linux pre-loads, and
let's say that they all use one binary-only driver in their setup, for
something pretty fundamental, like display, network or filesystem
access, or keyboard driver, or something.
Each one of those machines would be stuck in a time-warp, the
flexibility to patch, upgrade, fix security problems, install new
packages and so on entirely dictated by the machine vendor and his
willingness to release up to date drivers.
What if the drivers have a bug which stops them working with some
package which is important to /somebody/? They're unfixable, so we will
end up with the first steps towards the kind of Windows driver
nightmares we all know very well, and for many of us, were a key reason
for moving to Linux.
So, the binary driver problem, insignificant as it might seem, is about
to become *critical* to linux, because OEMs now have the choice as to
which way to go. Will they go for a lock-in, or will they go for
freedom to the user?
Well, taking a purely rational position, they'd go for freedom, since
the lock-in approach has been shown to be ultimately flawed, *but*, look
at the kind of arguments waterskidoo was using - people are *not*
rational, they will go with "proprietary must be ahead of the curve",
they will go with "open-source means suppliers won't support", they will
go with "we've always done it this way, so why should we change", they
will go with "nVidia are paying us to include their hardware and binary
driver" and so on.
The loopholes in GPLv2 are a really soft underbelly, waiting for the
same kind of unscrupulous exploiter who would happily sign
cross-licensing deals with Microsoft; there are plenty of these around,
and it will happen, make no mistake about that.
--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
| Cola faq: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/linux/advocacy/faq-and-primer/ |
| Cola trolls: http://colatrolls.blogspot.com/ |
| My (new) blog: http://www.thereisnomagic.org |
|
|
