On Thu, Dec 14, 2006 at 03:03:10AM -0500, James Morris wrote: > On Wed, 13 Dec 2006, Martin J. Bligh wrote: > > > The point of banning binary drivers would be to leverage hardware > > companies into either releasing open source drivers, or the specs for > > someone else to write them. > > IMHO, it's up to the users to decide if they want to keep buying hardware > which leads to inferior support, less reliability, decreased security and > all of the other ills associated with binary drivers. Let them also > choose distributions which enact the binary driver policies they agree > with. >...
Unfortunately, we are living in an economic system with the strong tendency to create oligopolys. Situations with only 1-3 manufacturers you can choose from are quite common (consider e.g. the 3D graphics market). If you aren't a big company with big market power but a simple costumer who needs such hardware you have zero choice if all manufactorers only offer binary-only drivers at best. And there's also the common misconception all costumers had enough information when buying something. If you are a normal Linux user and buy some hardware labelled "runs under Linux", it could turn out that's with a Windows driver running under ndiswrapper... > - James cu Adrian -- "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days. "Only a promise," Lao Er said. Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/