"The users dilemma" (Re: "Free software" vs. "Open Source" (again))

[Eric Feliksik]

Paul O'Malley wrote:
> Begging your pardon ladies and gents, I may have something over here in
> the corner that you might find slightly interesting.
> 
> Forgetting about the terms FOSS and Free Software for a moment and
> calling it the users dilemma I found an article by one local lugger (the
> current chairperson and a friend of mine) to be interesting and maybe
> relevant as he tries to write down the what it is that binary drivers
> are to users and other things that are not Free Software, and do not
> come with source are.
> 
> http://blogs.linux.ie/niallw/ the 'Kanotix and non-free stuff' is the
> more interesting one which also happens to mention Ubuntu. Also on the
> same page I point at the 'Parasites' story as these are the ones I think
> that need some answers to turn 'users' into lovers of Free Software
> where the Source is available, if I may be so bold as to break some
> other terms to create more needless confusion.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Paul O'Malley
> 

"The users dilemma" might indeed be a better description of the issue. 
Are users attached to Free Software or could they care less, and do they 
use it just because 'it works'?

When the discussion turns to free vs. non-free drivers, I think that 
Theo de Raadt's (from OpenBSD) work for free drivers [1] is a good 
thing. It may be a painful path, but could lead to a sunny spot.

In the blog you point to, it looks like the author recommends the usage 
of non-free drivers to some. I, myself, use non-free java and realplayer 
(along with non-free video codecs), and I can very well understand 
people want to use binary drivers to get things to work... :(

[1] http://kerneltrap.org/node/4818