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Kevin Carmony Responds to Criticism

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the painting-a-target-on-your-back dept.

sharkscott writes to tell us that LXer's Don Parris took a few minutes to get Kevin Carmony's response to the large amount of criticism he has been taking over offering non-free software in Linspire. From the article: "Essentially, Carmony's position is that, in ten years of holding out, the FOSS community has made relatively few gains, in terms of convincing vendors to release libre codecs and drivers. In other words, the strategy doesn't seem to be working. Additionally, while some will be patient, most users would prefer to have something - anything - that works in the meanwhile."

9 of 300 comments (clear)

  1. Continuing Discussion by AKAImBatman · · Score: 4, Insightful
    To repost my response to Mr. Paris on the L4C mailing list:

    I honestly don't understand why Pamela got into such a tizzy over Linspire. The entire point of OSS is to allow forking. The OSS software Linspire is using (and sharing) was released by its owners with the understanding that others would use it for both commercial and non-commercial uses. And they were fine with that. All they required was that changes to *their* code be returned to the public. Anything that the licensee creates separately is his own.

    Now that Linspire is taking advantage of that, we're supposed to get worked up about it? Why? If you don't want to contribute, don't contribute. Ignoring the project will kill it far faster than drawing attention to it.

    I have a lot of pet peeves against Michael Robertson (not the least of which is his tendency to greatly exaggerate),. but I don't hold a grudge against the guy. If he wants to share his software with the world while keeping parts proprietary, that's his business. All I ask is that Linspire doesn't lay any Intellectual Property traps for unsuspecting souls. It should be clear who owns what and what permissions are given.


    Note that Mr. Paris pointed out to me that Robertson stepped down as CEO. Carmony is running the show now. (Just in case you pay as little attention to Linspire as I do.)

    My point still holds, though. There's nothing "wrong" with what Linspire is doing with the Freespire project. They're giving away free binaries (which they don't have to give you) along with all the source code they owe you. In exchange, you may or may not become a Click and Run customer. I don't see an issue here. And no, I don't think that Linspire is really expecting a huge outpouring of volunteer programmers, either.

    On another topic (since I can't make fun of poor Mr. Robertson's Linspire work anymore), has anyone noticed the latest from AJAX Launch? It seems that they have added an Excel "Demo" (a pretty bit of XUL that looks like a real spreadsheet), a media player that seems no more sophisticated than the one in sharkscott's link in the summary (if I wanted your website to make noise... grrr...), and a RealPlayer video of the "AJAX Desktop" of the Future.

    Are you amazed yet? Ecstatic? Hopping up and down in excitement? Holding your breath in bated anticipation?

    No, neither am I. :-P
    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  2. If... by xx_toran_xx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If Linux proponents expect to see any sort of growth in desktop Linux usage, they are going to have to back down on this issue. Users want their MP3s to play. They want their videos to play. They don't want to deal with some complicated installation procedure just to get basic functionality that they can get easily, out-of-the-box in an install of another operating system.

    Linspire realizes this, so they're doing all they can to make it easy as they can for new Linux users to use Linux and do what they want. People shouldn't be giving them flack for this.

    --
    Arrrrrrr
    1. Re:If... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Except you've entirely missed the point of an open source operating system. By the death of a thousand pin-pricks, Linux may soon depend so much on closed code that a great number of the advantages it presents over closed operating systems like MS Windows will largely evaporate. You will either have a flakey system of dubious security that frequently breaks on OS upgrades due to dated drivers, or Linux will be locked into outdated but unchangable kernel schemes, for fear of breaking it's hordes of proprietary device drivers.

    2. Re:If... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You mean, rather than trying to get manufacturers to release their specs, we should just throw in the towel and wave the white flag.

      Frankly, the manufacturers don't seem to be suffering. What are you going to use as leverage?

  3. The OSS team needs to realise... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...that the _real world_ does not share their view that politics is the most important thing in software... Functionality is...

  4. And more power to them! by EnronHaliburton2004 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is the first I've heard of this situation involving Linspire. All I can say is, "Sounds good!"

    I can't believe how many times I have been stymied when configuring Linux because it didn't support my major-vendor video card. The "Open Source" version of certain drivers don't work. I tried an OSS implementation of some Nvidia drivers and it could barely spit out any video at all, much less allow me to use the advanced options on the card. I know the OSS developers tried hard, and I appreciate that. However, it just didn't work.

    At times like these, I don't really care about politics or philosophy. I'm just trying to get the computer working, and if I get stuck because of OSS, I'll just abandon the project.

    I suppose this is the reason why I haven't been a serious user of any Linux Desktop software for years. I use Linux as a server all the time, on dozens of different machines. It works great as a Server.

    --
    94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
  5. Why the strategy isn't working... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    IMHO, there has been little to no success getting vendors to release documentation to write drivers for three major reasons:

    1) To date, the market share represented by open-source operating systems is very small.

    2) The users and distributors of opensource operating systems have not presented a united front when it comes to the inclusion of propriety drivers and code. In fact, it seems the vast majority of distributors and users are more than willing to settle for closed, propriety drivers (even when they are crap!)

    3) American corporate culture reflexively resists voluntarily releasing information of any kind. It is always easier to say no. Some Taiwanese vendors, for example, have been found by some opensource projects to be rather cooperative when it comes to releasing information. Major American corporations by constrast are a guaranteed stonewall.

  6. Closed source sucks. by rice_burners_suck · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Being that we produce real time systems for control, we have a company policy that ALL software we use for development, and all libraries that we license for use in our products, must either come with 100% source code that we can build ourselves, or be developed in-house. This is because, after decades of problems with products and libraries that didn't come with source, our management decided that it would rather take longer to get products to market than suffer the problems and subtle unfixable bugs that are caused by closed source software.

    We believe that the only way the world can successfully advance in the field of computer software is by eventually replacing all closed source systems with open source ones.

    Take an example of Apple's recent success with Mac OS X. This software, although it contains tons of closed source code, is based on open source code and contains literally hundreds and hundreds of free software packages. Apple would never have succeeded in creating such a feature-rich operating system in the time it took to make it without the availability and use of such open source code.

    This is why this Linspire debacle is happening. People know that although the expedient thing to do is to continue using closed source proprietary stuff, the correct thing to do is to get ourselves off that addiction and on to some better software.

  7. Re:Does he have some examples? by Bacon+Bits · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Wow, that is just the absolute pinnacle of FOSS FUD.

    Who else but the designers of the hardware to produce drivers (open or otherwise)? They have access to hardware schematics, development plans, and the engineers who designed everything from the fabrication plants to the chips you're writing the drivers for. Do you honestly think you're a good enough programmer to fix a driver for hardware you have no knowledge of? I'm not a programmer hardly at all. It doesn't matter to me if it's open or closed. Either way, I can't fix anything.

    Assuming that something won't work because it's closed source is as stupid as the closed source camp claiming FOSS is more susceptible to security vulnerabilities. It's absolute BS. And won't get any help from the vendor? I'd say I'm as likely to not get help from a vendor as it is likely that the FOSS community will label my bug Won't-Fix. God forbid I happen to get some rare bit of critical hardware for which the FOSS "community" consists of one guy who's a complete idiot.

    Yes, I understand the FOSS model. Yes, I beleive it is superior. Yes, I believe it is the future. But avoiding closed software because of some nebulous bugaboo makes you seem like Chicken Little in a snowstorm.

    --
    The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.