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Linus Puts Kibosh On Banning Binary Kernel Modules
microbee writes "On LKML's periodic GPL vs. binary kernel module discussion, Andrew Morton hinted that he favors refusing to load binary modules in 12 months. Greg Kroah-Hartman then posted a patch to do exactly that. Surprisingly Linus chimed in and called it 'stupid' and a 'political agenda,' and even compared it with the RIAA's tactics. Later in the same thread Greg withdrew his patch and apologized for not having thought it through."
Woumld choose to use
It's one thing to be pragmatic, but Mr Torvalds hasn't met a princible that he can't shell out if it means a slight bit of convience. He's a complete fucking tool, and a hypocrite to boot. We'd all be better off if he got his shit together, stopped playing petty power games and provided a stable API for programmers to work with.
For myself, I can't wait for MS to give Torballs his cumuppence!
Ooh, ooh I have another one: taking credit for other people's work (i.e. insisting on Linux rather than GNU/Linux).
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Linus is so awesome. I get a hard-on just reading some of the stuff he posts to mailing lists. I like how he suggests they try to get this merged into Ubuntu and SUSE. The latter is now M$-pwned, and the former will soon be including binary video drivers by default. He knows full well this patch isn't going anywhere. Linus is a great BDFL. I'm proud to run Linux.
If there is a single reason Linux is not ready for the desktop is because of the attitude of people like you.
You know, most people don't use a computer to masturbate excited by self-esteem of using a weird shell with cryptic commands instead of blue fisher-price styled graphical squares. They use a computer TO DO SOMETHING. Given the choice between a system which does what they need and one which doesn't, their choice is obvious.
Would you use a car with only 1 gear, 10mph max speed and 30 minutes of autonomy just because its design is open ?
This is EXACTLY who Lunix will never be a serious operating system, why it will never be ready for the desktop, and why it will never be a viable alternative to Windows (or even OSX).
Lunix is a toy created by a fragmented community, which is being held together entirely by the efforts of one person. Lunis is the only thing holding it together. Once he leaves, either by moving on or personal/health reasons, the Lunix community will fragment in an orgy of sectarian destruction rivalling Iraq.
Microsoft will still exist without Bill Gates. Apple will still exist without Steve Jobs. But if Lunis Torvolds is no longer at the helm of Lunix, the operating system will die a slow death. Or maybe a fast one!
It is funny because you say you think binary drivers should be okay, but in my experience, binary drivers are like dealing with "low buget hardware and second rate drivers" and the open source drivers have been the highest quality of any drivers I have seen for the home market. I have a Nvidia card. The frakking binary drivers are total shit. Constant crashes (not only the driver, but sometimes the entire system!) while watching videos or 3D graphics. Sometimes just randomly. Sometimes during shutdown. WTF? In my decade of using Linux, I don't recall ever having an open source driver crash because it was buggy.
I don't really care what they say about needing to keep secrets. Whatever companies involved with that are either stupid or have some other agenda. Releasing programming specs won't make creating GPUs and any eaiser for their competitors. That is bullshit. The hard part is designing the internals of the chip.
Obviously, the open source drivers aren't going to do things where they aren't given the specs or can reverse engineer them. How about I give you a mystery chip and give you a vague description of what it does and expect you to make a program for it? Would you think that is reasonable or would you call me crazy???
I think the next graphics chipset I am going to buy will be open source. I wish intel made graphic cards because they work great. Open source drivers even, and I think they release the specs to everyone. I may go integrated, though I want an AMD64 processor and I don't think they make a motherboard with intel graphics and a AMD socket...
My dad's emachine runs linux great (just a minor issue with the hardware clock). It uses i810 graphics. Plus, with programming specs, (I saw a website before. I can't find it. Anyone have the url?) I may try playing with the chipset. Maybe I can make it do something interesting.
However, ATI may be going open source too?