[ubuntu-uk] Free vs non-free drivers

[Lee Tambiah]

> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 7
> Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2006 18:39:35 +0000
> From: "David Morley" <davmor2 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [ubuntu-uk] Free vs non-free drivers etc
> To: "British Ubuntu Talk" <ubuntu-uk at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Message-ID:
> 	<36feaa6c0611151039r19bf6f22ua15d9d317c17af70 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> On 15/11/06, Rob Beard <rob at esdelle.co.uk> wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > I was wondering if I could get peoples general opinion on free vs
> > non-free drivers etc.
> >
> 
> I have two views on this number one I play games on my machine so I
> want 3d, which is only available via non-free drivers.  Number 2 I
> believe that the card producers are doing what they can, (before I get
> flailed) I know they can do more but reading several reports including
> one from X.org they (the manufactures) don't own the rights to many of
> the chips used so you would only ever get partial open graphics in the
> manner of the latest intel chips.
> 
> Cutting a long story short their trying and should be commend for at
> least suppling Linux with drivers all be binary.

Its a shame there non-free but I think we have to also compromise with
our so called binary blobs. For example I have a NVIDIA card, and always
use the non-free driver binary blob as I want to use the power of my graphics
card i have purchased. Note I only use the blob as there is no equal alternative.

However I think Ubuntu are taking the right approach here as they are choosing to
educate people about FREE and NON-FREE and thats what people need to be advised.

>Flash is software not hardware and so yes it is bad.  They own all the
>rights to it and could therefore open source it and make the world a
>better place plus 64 bit versions would suddenly appear.

Exactly I would be annoyed at Ubuntu if they included Flash, or proprietry apps
I can handle the hardware binary blobs, but no more! It should be up to the user
to install the software they require! 

Macromedia have made an open source project though called Tamarin. This will inbed the
actionscript Virtual Machine into spidermonkey which is Firefox's core javascript engine.
I think interesting things will come of this, and will make Firefox easily number one :-)

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/

> > For some of us we need or want a bit of non-free code on our computers
> > as unfortunately it is the only way we can use our computers or get the
> > experience we want.  One of the guys on my local LUG said that if we're
> > running non-free on Linux then we're better off running Windows.

Well Im not sure about that ;-). A lot of people use GNU/Linux to break free
from proprietry software. I certainly wouldn't go back to it, no matter what.

Lee Tambiah



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