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Kevin Carmony Responds to Criticism
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."
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.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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
...that the _real world_ does not share their view that politics is the most important thing in software... Functionality is...
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
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.
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.
Last week's Slashdot article on Theo de Raadt was about how he's not using binary drivers.
Ever try writing a 1 to the /proc/self/seccomp file? That blocks everything except read/write on already-open file descriptors, exit, and some stuff for returning from signal handlers. On x86, the cycle counter is disabled too.
The alternative is an extremely strict SE Linux policy, but seccomp is probably better for this job. One could use both at the same time I suppose.
I don't want some spyware crap telling Sony/Microsoft/Real/Sorensen about everything I do and probably acting as a backdoor.
Keep in mind that you can't rely on the nVidia drivers to work, because they are closed source. Opting for a closed source driver is accepting that Bad Things may happen to your system, and you may not get any help if they do.
Their windows drivers are closed source, but I expect them to work. I also /do/ expect the nvidia linux drivers to work, because... they do!
Sure, nvidia "might not" keep the drivers up to date with all the linux kernel side changes that are going on, but they "might not" with windows as well... but they do, so their customers can use their product.
Okay, this weeks drivers might not work with next weeks kernel, but this is a problem with the linux kernel not having the same backwards compatibility as windows. Can hardly blaim nvidia for that.
It's so not as big a deal as everyone keeps making out.
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
The distro I use, Gentoo, lets you play mp3s easily. In fact most Linux distributions do. I don't think it's a controversial issue that people want interoperability with their closed format files.
But that's not the issue people have with Linspire.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
I'm guessing that this response was motivated (at least in part) by the effort of PJ at Groklaw. For those that have visited recently, PJ did a scathing article on Linspire/Freespire. Really harsh stuff which a lot of people found pretty unwarranted. Myself included.
... deleted. Then it descended into farce.
So I posted anonymously as I usually do. The odd thing that happened to me was that I found my post deleted. So I posted again
She seemed convinced that this was an orchestrated attack by Linspire "astroturfers". And when Kevin posted to the forum, she wouldn't talk to him and asked him for an apology from the (imaginary, IMHO) astroturfers. Having said that, Kevin did quote an email he sent PJ which I thought was poor form.
Anyway, I literally sat there for ages watching post after post being deleted which I thought was amazing. A large number of these posts were quite sensible. They just didn't tow the Groklaw line.
When it had calmed down a couple of days later, I posted that here is a place where they discuss free speech, but don't practice it. Quite frankly, the amount of groupthink and censorship I saw left me with a very different opinion of the place.
The best thing about Slashdot's comment system is that it keeps all the posts. Even the trolls.
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.
Drivers for fully supported hardware are kept right in there in the kernel tree on kernel.org.
Whenever the internal kernel interfaces change (which is really pretty rarely) kernel programmers also check all those drivers and make any changes necessary.
Once a device is supported, it's very nearly perpetual. It's rare for drivers to be removed, and usually when they are it's because they've been superceded (the hardware still works, the support is just being done more elegantly, for instance when 2.6.16 was released amdtp and cmp had been removed, but that was because the hardware they supported is now supported with libiec61883.)
For a device that was once supported to actually be dropped, there has to be a major kernel change combined with no one in the kernel development community (paid or volunteer) having the motivation to update it. This means, no paying customers of RedHat, SuSE, etc. using it, no kernel hackers have one in a still functional system at home, etc. And even then, you're free to grab the source for the last working version and update it yourself, or pay someone else to do it.
Try to do that with a binary driver.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Lack of backwards compatibility would "doom all driver projects to eternal development", except that kernel drivers are updated by whoever breaks backwards compatibility. This is why drivers need to be in the official kernel source tree. Driver authors often sit back and relax while other people make the required changes to all drivers in the tree. Updating the drivers is often a robotic task, often taken on by the "kernel janitors" team.
This usually keeps the less-popular drivers alive for many years, though not forever of course. Linux just recently lost support for the PC-XT hard drives that came in 5 MB, 10 MB, and 20 MB sizes back in the early 1980's. (these never shipped with a 386, but people sometimes put the old drives in newer machines) It is unlikely that any of these drives still work.
Get a market share above 10% and vendors with consider to release on Linux. Get a market share above 20% and vendors will release on Linux. Get a market share above 30% and vendors can't afford not to release on Linux!
5 .pdf). How to fix this inhibitor? One important action (IMHO the most important) is to declare the guidelines of wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) as the Linux application standard!
How to get a higher market share? Fix the first top inhibitor of the Linux adoption (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov200
There might be other actions to fix this inhibitor but I don't know any. Just voice them here and now. But be sure unless this inhibitor isn't fix fast, the market share of Linux will stay low, too low for any significance.
IMHO it's essential that anybody (maybe O'Reilly) starts a Linux conference about this subject to discuss any possibility.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
By two tracks I mean one track that has a Linspirish philosophy of just make it work for newbies even if that also means including some closed source proprietory software, AND a purist RMS FSF.
Really these two tracks compliment each other the closed source development track brings in newbewies while the purest camp can defend our freedoms and perhaps save our butts if DRM becomes very prevalent.
The point is though why does each side have to try to convert the other to it's philosophy as my way or the highway? Lets let them both run and see what happens, after all that's what's going to happen anyway, it's very unlikely either FSF or closed source software is going away any time soon.
I use OS X which has closed source software in the OS and I run closed source apps as well, but I also run fink/KDE as well on top of the open source Darwin base at times, as well as running Firefox as my browser. Does that mean one "side" or the other should work to convert me? What nonsense, what a waste of developer time, and above all how immature.
Can't you argue about something of real importance like poverty, or war, or whether peak oil is real, etc?
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Source code would be nice, but it's not what we want most.
We want hardware documentation. We can write our own software. Our software will be more stable, portable, and maintainable. Performance could be a win or a lose.
With hardware documentation, we can turn a WinModem into a telephony interface for a PBX. We can support Linux, OpenBSD, GNU HURD, and eCos. We can port the X server to run on the GPU. Lots of neat ideas become possible.
I always play my MP3s with a legitimate, patent-licensed player. After I download them from eDonkey.
Kevin and Michael are both incredibly nice guys who have a particular angle of insight that no other distro has. That is, that users want something that just works in ways that leave ordinary people knowing what to do, or better, not needing to do anything except the task that interests them. Linspire gets it that most people don't want to do things more complicated than click and run. It takes an enormous effort to make software be just click and it works. That deserves our respect.
All of us are contributing, each in the ways we most understand. This sniping at each other, it is simply harmful.
I think I am going to go install Linspire. Let's face it, I don't have the time to hassle with making mp3s and dvd players and voip work on the big distros either, and I am a Linux developer, I can't imagine what ordinary users do when they want to use Linux on one of these distros that requires you to get libraries that don't just compile and work and somehow install them before your dvds can play. Or have they finally gotten it together recently, someone tell me....
If it is not written by me, it should just click and run.;-) Or at least, make and run.
Oh, and pissing on nvidia is not reasonable. At least they port to Linux, ATI just ignores us.
Charity is something to be thankful for, not to demand. Free software is charity. I like to do it myself, but that gives me no right to demand it of other more sensible persons.
A couple of years ago, the 'Linux Incompatibility List' was created to track stuff that doesn't work with Linux:
http://www.leenooks.com/
It may not be much, but it has the advantage that it points out what to avoid, and it's community maintained - with all the hardware out there these days, no one person can know about it all.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
People already must install numerous pieces of proprietary software on their linux systems. Who uses *desktop* linux without any proprietary drivers or software? Even ignoring drivers, what about Java? None of the Java clones are nearly as good as Sun Java... yet linux distros fail to include Sun Java, forcing nearly everyone using java for any serious purpose to replace it immediately at some unnecessary inconvenience.
By taking the hardline "only OSS" stance at the distro level, we're just pushing installing the non OSS software onto the users. It's just an annoyance that accomplishes nothing.
As far as Linux being locked into unchangeable kernel schemes... maintaining binary compatibility for drivers is something they should be doing anyway. It is something that every other kernel I know of does, and it is just plain annoying that I can't swap out the drivers from one linux install to another because of driver breaks between kernel versions. At the very least, driver compatibility should be guaranteed between minor version numbers.
Yup, everyone with a different opinion is a paid shill.
It's comments like these that got me started on my intense dislike for some portions of the F/OSS community. I dared to post that Windows has gotten fairly stable, and is actually a reasonable operating system. Not a safe thing to say.
I don't personally know much about Linspire, but I do know that this community has to get rid of whatever's attracting so many people with this offensive elitist attitude. The very existance of the word "luser" makes me feel bad for the perversion of the principles behind free software.
"Quoting yourself is stupid." -Me
"So I posted anonymously as I usually do"
Why not stop moaning about it and create an account (free) and post from that? PJ's had SCO astroturfers hitting her sight and has had 'friends' of SCO posting her personal details to the internet at the same time she was getting death threats.
So she might be a little oversensitive. Get over it.
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We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
What? Since when does the "Open Source camp" prefer non-copyleft licenses? What kind of drivel is this?
And why is no one screaming and pulling their hair over the fact that Dell ships their RH Enterprise-equipped machines with closed-source nVidia drivers?
I teach my Open Source Technology students that OS is a continuum, and that everyone falls somewhere along that continuum. ESR embraces the business side of OSS, while RMS (firmly!) embraces the libre side...everyone involved in OSS has some philosophical bent. If PJ has a problem with Linspire, she has every right to rant about it. But since she doesn't speak for the OSS movement, we have every right to ignore her (or pick up the pieces we agree with and discard the rest).
The beauty of OSS is that there's room for everyone. Don't like what Linspire is doing? No worries, come up with your own distro that ships with OSS versions of whatever it is about Linspire that rubs you the wrong way.
Not all software is open source. Its a fact of life. I love open source software. I love free software. but I do not think there is anything wrong with putting non-free software in your linux package. This kind of attitude is holding back linux. So what is 1 distro out of hundreds becomes "tainted" with copyrighted software.
Guess what? I play Neverwinter Nights and myth2, on my linux/bsd boxes! So shoot me because the source is not open. Its open source fundamentalism, at its worst. If you want to put out a good product, you have to come to the realization that not all drivers or software is free, and unless you want to write your own driver for every single bit of 19.99$ hardware out there, or 29.99$ game or productivity tool, its a lot easier to package binaries.