We have looked at FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and other BSD distributions in terms of
chipset support. If you think Trisquel lacks support for hardware then BSD
doesn't support anything at all.
:)
While some of our products do work with at least some BSD flavors a lot of
it is only on the verge of working. Most of the hardware which does work is
due to the free Linux drivers being ported. The problem is a lack of people
to do the actual porting and that a lot of hardware isn't free software
friendly. The stuff that really is freedom friendly should be portable in
most cases.
GNU/Linux has a lot of commercial support on the desktop. If it wasn't for
commercial companies like Redhat, IBM, Oracle (ok, lets be honest, Sun really
did the funding, and Oracle did the killing) funding development GNU/Linux
would not exist as we know it. Even Trisquel couldn't exist.
Most developers working on GNU/Linux are paid to do so. They are not
volunteers. This is not an attack on those who do make contributions without
payment. There are just so few people who are independently wealthy that they
can afford to make significant contributions. While some critical parts and
developers are paid for by non-profits the developers are still being paid.
Then you have to ask who funds these non-profits? It is the same entities who
are paying the developers to work on GNU/Linux. I think Trisquel is one of
the few projects where this is not the case.
I think is part of the problem free software faces. Those who are funding
development aren't concerned about freedom. They aren't concerned about the
desktop. The money going into desktop development is largely without a return
on the investment.
If you look at the larger GNU/Linux ecosystem you will see there is a lot
non-free software. From the Adobe Flash player to file formats. While
Realplayer, Adobe, AMD and others have released specifications and source
code for some of the the non-free GNU/Linux software most don't release
everything. These are largely token efforts.
These companies don't really care about GNU/Linux or software freedom. They
care about the money and being able to sell the products they create.
Marketing gets to say things like 99% of systems support flash by releasing a
GNU/Linux version. The non-free tools and services are where they make the
money. It is probably why Microsoft worked with Novell. The truth behind the
numbers is probably closer to 85% fully support XYZ and 15% don't despite
these 99% claims.
