Proprietary Parts in OLPC Project Draw Criticism

An anonymous reader writes "The Jem Report is running a story about the recent controversy surrounding the hardware used in OLPC laptops. Some devices require NDA's to write drivers, and some parts require firmware that cannot be freely redistributed. Richard Stallmann and Theo de Raadt oppose the use of such devices. Jim Getty defends OLPC's choice (de Raadts response). Jem Matzan has interviewed all sides and published the answers."

Comments

Re:Just because 'they' oppose it...

[swillden]

RMS and Theo are trying to use this project as a soapbox to further their own political views, and that disgusts me.

Those political views created open source, without which the OLPC project could not achieve its goals.

These are all good people doing good things, and they mostly share the same goals. There's a disagreement over which of the goals is most important, and some of them (Theo) tend to be a little bombastic, but there's nothing to be disgusted about.

Re:Locking in a new market

[swillden]

When was the last time people felt locked-in by device drivers?

You're kidding, right? Device drivers are one of the largest sources of computer lock-in ever. In fact, it was a device driver (a printer driver, to be specific) that motivated RMS to start the Free Software movement. Until the last couple of years, device drivers were the most oft-quoted reason why switching to an F/LOSS operating system wasn't feasible, and they're still very high on the list.

Device drivers matter. A lot. Maybe only programmers deal with them directly, but end-users certainly feel the pain when they're not available or don't work.

That said, as I mentioned in another post, this conflict isn't about device driver availability or even device driver source, it's about device documentation. Theo wants it, Marvell won't give it, Getty and company have found a way to work around the issue by getting it under NDA so they can write open source firmware and drivers.