Your looking at this all wrong. The problem is the proprietary drivers. The
reason Trisquel removes these pieces is because the developers and users
aren't able to fix problems, make improvements, etc.
Proprietary drivers are bad. It doesn't matter which side of the street your
on.
The question is how to fix the problem that there are disagreements over. The
one side says promote free software in any way possible. If it breaks “ohh
well”. The problem with that thinking is most users who are non-technical
are going to run into problems with the unsupportable software.
Examples:
Adobe discontinues support for adobe flash- the GNU/Linux community is
screwed. There is no way for the community to pick up the development of
flash. Now you can continue to use flash but ONLY if you download Chrome.
Sun released the code for Java. Unfortunately it isn't a complete solution
and releases a non-free version side by side. Oracle buys Sun and
discontinues the license portion which allows the non-free version to be
distributed by third parties. This creates a problem because companies like
Canonical can no longer push updates to the proprietary software. This is a
security problem. Canonical is now forced to issue an “update” that
removes this software. That results in breakage. Users end up finding that
the web sites that use to work now don't. They blame Linux. They should be
blaming these bad policies.
Now we get to hardware. The benefits to supporting proprietary software here
are thin. The advantage is new users might have more hardware working out of
the box. The downside is it promotes the idea that proprietary software
actually works with GNU/Linux. The problem is it doesn't work well.
So why doesn't it work well? There are all sorts of issues with how GNU/Linux
is developed. There is no stable ABI. In order for some drivers to fully
support GNU/Linux there would need to be stabilization. However this would
hold GNU/Linux back and prevent certain improvements/advancements/etc that
make GNU/Linux what it is. The solution is to require the complete source
code. This would also ensure that users are able to get drivers beyond the
life expectancy of the product (that is longer than the product is for sale).
In many cases you would only have a working product (say a printer) for a
year. After which point that printer will no longer work. This is not a
problem that can be solved easily simply by accepting non-free software.
The solution is to let users know that they need to purchase a new sound
card, a new wifi card, a new graphics card, with proper support (free
software support) for “Linux” etc. This is actually much easier and less
costly than messing around with getting things like NDISWrapper working or
screwing around with a terminal to download some proprietary firmware that
can't be redistributed due to a restrictive licensing agreement. This
NIDSWrapper program loads proprietary Microsoft Windows drivers and creates
instability in the system. Half the time you get wifi signals which drop. On
the chance it does work well enough to use it creates instability in the OS.
The software makes clear it is a hack to the problem. The fact people are
advised to use it is bad advice. Then when things crash and burn people blame
“Linux”.
No. The solution to the problem is to understand the value of free software
and embrace it. If your going to accept that you need to buy a Mac to get Mac
OS X support there shouldn't be any reason the GNU/Linux world can't
recommend hardware with proper support for the OS. It s**** that you have to
replace a component or two. However it is much better to do this and learn
how to solve the real problem than wasting the time and energy to get some
device with half-*** support working. Then users will know better and buy
properly supported hardware going forward and never have to “deal with
Linux again” (and without abandoning it altogether because it is too hard).
