On Friday 19 November 2010 11:18:03 Andrew Lynn wrote: > On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 4:16 AM, Narendra Sisodiya > > <[email protected]> wrote: > > Let me put my voice on the biggest hurdle in FOSS adaptation. > > This hurdle is "Proprietary Hardware Drivers" > > In India we recently established a "Open Standard Policy".It is > > the great success of FOSS communities and our leaders. > > In the same way we need to have a policy on Hardware selling. > > This policy must specify that "Anything which Govt is buying must > > have a Open Specification of their Driver." > > > > Why this is important ? > > > > Let me explain by an example. > > A school from my town has purchased hardware 1 year ago. At the > > time of purchase they are not knowing about Linux. Now even If > > they want to move they have to take expert consultancy to install > > Linux. Because many a time some device refuse to work with > > GNU/Linux because GNU/Linux do not have proprietary drivers. For > > example some WebCam do not work directly on GNU/Linux or most of > > the whiteboards which is a high trend in schools etc. > > > > Dear all FOSS advocates, You need to remember that you can visit > > a school or college and try for installing GNU/Linux BUT you > > can't change hardware from a system. We must have a clear policy > > that says - "every device must have a open specification or > > driver for all available operating systems". > > > > We seriously need to blacklist proprietary driver and hardware > > from market and stop their sell. > > Proprietary hardware is one from of monopoly which is more > > dangerous then proprietary software,
I agree fully with the above. > > This needs more of a debate. There are existing hardware > compatibility lists e.g.[1], which serve as advisories, but have > limited impact on policy. The hardware compatability lists are a community provided service, which has nothing to do with crooked vendors. > > While no one would question the argument that proprietary drivers > pose a severe restriction for widespread FOSS adoption, it is > important to provide space to integrate proprietary drivers if no > viable FOSS drivers are available - at risk to killing FOSS > adoption by allowing only basic features. Did I get that right? proprietary drivers killing FOSS. The government is the biggest IT purchaser. Having set guidelines on using FOSS, they must insist that ALL HARDWARE procured by the government must have their specifications mandatorily open. What happens when a hardware vendor winds up in the hands of an inimical foreign government? You cant hold your IT systems hostage to some vendor hardware. > it is probably a better > idea to look at a white list with a layered acceptance criteria to > filter hardware at procurement. A blacklist alongside is a must. carrot-stick etc. > > To seed this discussion I propose that one such layered approach > could be to define a policy such as: > > All hardware procured should be (additionally) certified to > demonstrate the integration of all in-built and specified > peripheral devices using all features/functionalities on the device > with at least three community based popular GNU/Linux distributions > namely Fedora, Open-Suse and Debian, through the following criteria does not cut it at all. The average life of a distro is around 6 months. What happens after 3 years?. Throw away all that hardware?. > > (1) Devices should adhere to the specifications of the Linux > Kernel[2] (AND) You mean the drivers should adhere to the coding standards of the kernel. linux does not specify the innards of any hardware (byte ordering, or cache, or network device fifio or whatever). > (2) Devices with the source code for the drivers/peripherals > released under GNU GPLv2/3 license >(OR) > (3) In the inability of the manufacturer to release the driver > under the criteria (2) above, The government shall not procure such devices or recommend such devices for purchase (eg RBI mandating properitary hardware for connecting to the NEFT) > the driver should be available in > stable and testing repositories compatible with the above named > mainstream community distributions.[3] Bitrot will guarantee any such availability to be worse than useless. -- Rgds JTD _______________________________________________ network mailing list [email protected] http://lists.fosscom.in/listinfo.cgi/network-fosscom.in
