Slashdot Mirror
Should the Linux Desktop Be "Pure?"
jammag writes "According to Matt Hartley, many Linux desktop users don't like to admit that there's scads of closed source code commonly used with the Linux desktop. Hartley points to examples like proprietary drivers, the popularity of Skype among Linux users (in preference to the open source Ekiga), and the use of Wine. He concludes that, hey, if the code works, use it — a stance that won't sit well with purists. But his article raises the question: is it better to embrace some closed source fixes, and so create a larger user base, or to remain pure, and keep Linux for the specialists?"
The answer is no,.
Football Odds
It's wrong to force a choice upon others and I thought that was one of the main points about 'free'-software?
That was the entire fucking point of the GNU project in the first place!!
Anything that sits in the kernel and has the possibility of crashing your system should have source code. Anything in userland is fair game for closed source software.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
I think the point of linux is to allow people to do what they want instead of having "important" people tell them what to do. This guy can shove it.
To me, this is a great example of the free software vs open source debate.
Free software is a political movement, concerned with user freedom, and the creation of an operating system made entirely from free software.
Open source is a development methodology that aims to make better free software, but has no problem with using and even developing proprietary software at the same time.
Personally, I think is a real shame that so many distributions have non-free software in their repositories, but they are ultimately more concerned with getting more users to their distro than promoting software freedom.
It's quite telling that the GNU project only lists a handful of distributions, most of which very few will have heard of or used, yet I'm glad that such a list exists.
The distributions which are making inroads to getting on that list, such as Fedora and Debian, and the distributions which move further away from that list with each release, including, sadly, Ubuntu are quite evident of the difference in their communities.
Ubuntu is concerned by things like "marketshare" -- there is no market when your product can be redistributed freely.
Join the Free Software Foundation
Let's be frank. There are some things that open-source isn't good at (see user interface design). Any pragmatic user is going to use the best tools for the job. In this case, going by the article, the example is Skype.
In another case, the best tool may be Firefox (over Internet Explorer). This is the reverse, and again it's (to many people) the best tool for the job.
I've never really understood the debate here. Yes, it would be great if the whole desktop could be open-source. But any realistic user (read: not a zealot) is going to use the best tool for the job (and so will I)
So by all means, work on replacements for Skype, graphics card drivers, and the like. There will always be people who like to write code and reverse-engineer and I say more power to them. Just let the rest of us use what works.
It's like going with an appliance (that is less efficient and less featured) just because it has schematics. Most people just use what works best.
For a distro like Ubuntu, which is supposed to work out of the box, this means closed-source. It's still a monstrous improvement over Windows.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
If that's your concern, go with one of the FSF-approved distros.
The way the article is phrased, it's all or nothing. "The Linux Desktop" is not a single entity, why should the separate distros all conform to a single ideal?
There will never gonna be only _ONE_ distribution to rule them all like the gleichschaltung nazis always untiringly call for. Let windows converts use distros with CSS, let gpl purists use their gnewsense, let apfel fanboys use whatever apple feeds them with. Diversity is good. Diversity is healthy. Diversity is a sign of free, uncensored evolution.
The openness of the drivers is very important for cross-compatibility among all architectures in the kernel. P.S. I want PPC Linux Nvidia and ATI Drivers (3d acceleration still sucks). Also better support for video acceleration among the ultra expensive and ultra old SGI video cards would be nice.
But his article raises the question: is it better to embrace some closed source fixes, and so create a larger user base, or to remain pure, and keep Linux for the specialists?"
The beauty of Linux is that users can answer that question for themselves and choose the distribution that best conforms to what they want. For general acceptance things need to 'just work', but if you are pure of free software heart with the intelligence to make things that don't just work work, possessed of courage and time and command line chops, you could use something like Debian. Hell, you could build Linux from Scratch if you wanted to.
Loose lips lose spit.
You don't have to be absolute anything. I wouldn't give up a 3d graphics card for not using a the Nvidea driver, but I would certainly buy an ATI card over an Nvidea card. I would rather use free software over closed source, but I will be making plenty of compromises.
I still want my laptop with an ultrspace T1 and open graphics card.:P
Beef = Not Pure. Tastes amazing, extremely high market share, everyone knows what it is, loved by a very large majority.
Now sure, you can find some folks who love Tofu, clean arteries, low cholesterol, etc.
Most people would rather live 50 years on Porterhouse steaks, than 150 years on Tofu.
Put some closed source in it, man! Call it Salmonella code, if ya want, but mix it up and make it taste better!
Its all about the taste.
I would have just linked to the 1 page print version, but no, this site annoys by spreading the print version over 2 pages too! So here's the whole article:
Closed Source vs. Open Source in Desktop Linux
By Matt Hartley
July 12, 2008
When most people in IT think of Linux, they picture an open source operating system kernel, along with other software, coming together to create the server and desktop OS based on Free software. That image is accurate - and there's no question that it's open source code (and community cooperation) that has helped Linux to become the powerhouse that it is today.
But at what point do we accept that - whether we like it or not - closed source applications will eventually have to be let in to this otherwise "open" world? After all, this has already been happening for years, despite the Linux purists kicking and screaming the entire time.
In fact, closed source code is used everyday within the Linux world. And here's the funny thing: most of us never really think twice about it.
Closed source with Linux - it's not a new concept.
While the core of the desktop Linux operating system (regardless of distribution) is powered by open source code, it is commonly used side by side with code that gets less attention - indeed, many Linux purists seem to forget about: Closed source software and drivers are used with desktop Linux every single day by thousands of people.
From specific firmware added by select distributions to ensure wireless compatibility to the open source software known as WINE, which allows users to run closed source Windows applications, proprietary code has its place on the Linux desktop.
Besides, how would most notebooks initially built for Windows get their wireless connectivity without an NDISWrapper using proprietary wireless drivers designed for Windows? Closed source code was, is - and may very well always be - a major part of using Linux on the desktop.
If the code works, let it be.
One recent event that has again sparked hostility between open and closed source users was NVIDIA's failure to provide source code for their Linux-based graphics drivers. Yet unlike ATI, I personally have never had a single problem using the closed source NVIDIA drivers. Any issues that did arise were handled fairly quickly by NVIDIA itself.
So why is there a problem, again?
In the past, Linux developers have expressed concern over having to "work around" these NVIDIA provided drivers. To basically thinking ahead to how things will end up should a user opt to install these "binary blobs," as developers like to refer to them.
Despite their concern, I would point out that NVIDIA has a fairly decent track record with bug control and, mysteriously, Linux developers have been able to make things work on their end despite this issue with the licensing behind the current closed source NVIDIA driver.
Regardless of any one developer's frustration over NVIDIA driver licensing, the fact of the matter is that providing closed source drivers has worked rather well for everyone involved - for a number of years.
Don't get me wrong, I would love to see NVIDIA open up the drivers as much as the next guy. However, seeing Linux purists calling out for a boycott against a vendor who is indeed supporting the Linux platform is simply begging for future repercussions yet to surface.
Negative feelings expressed above will eventually present bigger problems for any closed source software companies looking to take a dip in the Linux development waters. Given that most software companies use closed source software and many hardware companies do the same, the reaction to NVIDIA's decision is going to heavily color how hardware vendors looking into Linux compatibility choose to go forward.
The pathetic thing is that many of them will hold out as long as possible, as Linux developers are largely considered to be a royal pain in the backside by the closed source world.
Application consistency, not source code politic
I've noticed a lot of Linux people talking about Freedom in software while running proprietary stuff. This is pure B.S. Do what you feel is right and what works for you, but don't lie to yourself and others. If you're going to accept BLOBs and other proprietary software that's fine, but quit talking about how Linux is opening everything up. If you're going to talk about Freedom, then quit using all the closed source stuff and live by your words.
The "if the code works, use it" attitude is what gave us the DOS, Windows, and MS Office monopolies. It's particularly dangerous because most people have no idea what "working" means when they start out using something, and then establish a bad standard.
Being purist about this sort of thing is pragmatic. OK, so occasionally use Skype or whatever if you really need to. But if you simply don't give damn, you risk condemning us to another several decades of bad monopolies of one or the other kind.
OK, I have to agree with byolinux on this one. Many distribs are now moving towards the world of "market share" and dare I mention it, commercialism. It is a shame that distribs have to include (or give repository access to) closed source software. Ideally the user needs to be made very aware of the closed source nature of the software prior to installing, which distribs do not commonly do. For me, its not about usability but transparency. I'm not worried that closed source software is somehow unpure from a social standpoint, we just happen to know how closed source applications have been outed in the past. IMHO of course :).
TFA's question is mildly interesting, in a theoretical sense; but it hugely misses the point. There isn't some "Linux Desktop Directorate of Purity" which comes together to decide whether or not the desktop should be pure. He seems mystified as to why some proprietary code; but not other proprietary code, is attacked by linux advocates. It is obvious: kernel drivers vs. userland apps. People attack proprietary kernel drivers because they aren't legal and because they are a threat to the viability of Linux as a Free platform. Proprietary apps are neither. They may or may not be a good idea; but they are completely irrelevant to the concerns of the kernel. It isn't that hard.
The only place where there is any sort of authoritative stance is with respect to licence violations. Because of the licences under which large parts of the linux desktop are distributed, there are certain places where proprietary code is not legal. Full stop. Period, etc. In practice, this mostly occurs with non-GPL kernel drivers.
In all other cases, it is purely a matter of the user's preference. There are no restrictions whatsoever on running applications of any kind of licence on linux, or compiling applications with any kind of licence with GCC, or whatever.
Now, to be fair, TFA's question is interesting in the sense that whether or not linux users should tolerate proprietary apps on their desktops is an interesting question.
In microkernel approach the closed source drivers would be unable to crash anything. Don't blame the closed source drivers for architecture flaws.
One problem I can see with the f/oss movement is that it is largely centered around "scratching an itch" -- ie, developing for oneself and peers. When the majority of the user base has at least some level of experience in programming, then whether or not the system's code is available to them is a concern. For the most part though, people who use computers rather than do computers don't care.
The developers at Microsoft and Apple aren't doing it for themselves, they're doing it for other people to use. Their customers and end users don't really care about the philosophical and political implications of using a closed source driver - they just want their graphics card to do the things the company promised; they want their software to work and that be that.
No, certain segments of software I can certainly see the benefit in having be open and free - particularly for maths and sciences. Software the aids in the furthering human knowledge and advancement should be freely available to everyone. On the other hand, games -- not so much.
But, until Octave is a fully drop-in replacement for MatLab, there is still going to be a market for MatLab on Linux. Until nVidia opens their specs and/or drivers -- or they can be fully and completely reverse engineered, then people are still going to use the closed drivers so that they can use Compiz, or whatever it is that they're trying to do.
But unless we can get some rich bastard like Shuttleworth to put up the funding for a company to make open hardware, f/oss is always going to be playing second fiddle in the driver game. Unless we can get university maths and science departments to use Octave or wxMaxima instead of MatLab, we're going to be playing catch up and the "clone" game.
And frankly, until we stop making software a political statement, we're going to end up driving away a lot of people who just want to use the computer to do useful (to them) work and not make the computer their life. Its bad enough that Apple and MS have the images of being linked to the Democrat-Republican divide (although Rush seems to enjoy the Mac); Does f/oss really want to be linked to bomb-throwing anarchists at the world trade meetings?
Linux is not the open source community. The community existed before linux, and will still exist after.
As far as I'm concerned, you can't force people to open source their code. You can encourage them to, but some companies never will. This makes closed source "fixes" necessary, at least in the short term, if we want desktop adoption to keep progressing.
That being said, there still are plenty of open source apps out there... And if you're not happy with a closed source product, you can always make your own open source version.
Should the Linux Desktop Be "Pure?"
Short answer: No.
Long answer: There is no 'the' Linux Desktop. There is my linux desktop, your linux desktop, that guys linux desktop, and so on.
I personally like 3d acceleration and a working wifi card.
If you want a pure linux desktop, then your linux desktop should be pure.
Kindly keep your nose out of mine, plzktnx.
theres plenty of oss versions of every distro avable even ubuntu. so the point hear has no merit.
You can do what you want with Linux. Be pure. Or not.
Either way it's up to you.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Instead of praising "OS purity," how about integrating closed source code to fulfill a function in OS software? We don't need false dichotomies.
Postglobalism: Reclaiming civilization
Not all linux users are Stallmanites. I personally do NOT program jack. So whether the source is open or not matters little to me. Just give me a low-cost or free desktop OS that does what I need without M$ bloat or issues, and Im a happy camper.
Non free software opens you up to abuse and bugs. Non free software can have backdoors, spyware and other malicious features. Non free software does not get the love and attention it deserves, so it's almost always buggier an and more bloated than free alternatives. Hardware that requires binary blob firmware loading is never as good as hardware that just works.
That said, there are still a few places non free software is useful. Games, accelerated video cards, Skype and so on. If you have to have those things, you might have to put up with some non free software. I've been happier without any of that. If I want to play games, I can get a console.
Freedom to use your computer in the way that best meets your needs. Linux helps me do that by allowing me to install whatever software I choose to use.
Now, should a *distribution* include non-free software? My personal feeling is that it should not, but that a user should have no problem finding and installing it from a non-free repository.
Like many posters above, I fail to see the issue here. The beauty of Linux (and other open source operating systems) is the ability to choose what you want.
This is what the core of the issue is: I prefer open source - but I need to use skype at work (Our clients use it, and we use it for in-office communications) and I am okay with it. A colleague decided to go with an open source alternative that works just as well for him.
So that is the point right there: Nobody makes the choice for me when I work with FOSS as my starting point.
Another thing is that most of our clients use windows, and when I go out to do on-site service I need to boot into windows - often simply to put my XP box on their network in order to troubleshoot. Now my choice becomes limited.
O I am sure that I could use my Ubuntu boot all of the time, but it would be not practical, especially since Ubuntu handles networking so much better than XP. I need to attach my Laptop (in XP mode) to the network to see if I am having the same issue.
As an offtopic aside: I constantly need to launch cmd to "fix" windows computers, yes even with Vista. I often use ipconfig /all, release, renew; route print, net user passwwd etc. I often tell non tech-able folks over the phone to "click on start, run... okay, now type cmd, yes cee...emmm...deee...okay. Now type ipconfig /all...yes all lowercase is fine..."
Doing that and letting them read from the top what that command prints out is often easier than asking them to click around until they get to tcp/ip and properties to see if they have a static IP address or not...
flame: Now is XP/Vista desktop ready? I mean I constantly need to use the command line...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
there is already a unix based OS with a good GUI, it's called OS X. Every serious *nix guy I know uses it now.. Linux is a very good server OS... the desktop is a toy if you do anything other than browse and email, which you can arguably do with a wristwatch these days.
If you install proprietary software, you can uninstall it later easier than escaping slavery. A better analogy would be choosing to enter into slavery for a set period of time in order to accomplish some goal you might not otherwise. Say 40 hours a week in exchange for being able to afford clothing and food. You can, at your choice, choose to be your own boss if you want to remain pure, just like you can write/debug your own application. So installing proprietary graphics drivers would accomplish a short term goal until a pure version is available - and you have that freedom to choose.
They're the reason GNU/Linux exists. It wasn't started on the basis of some wishy-washy general notion of freedom, but is very explicitly defined. If you don't agree with it, well hey, there are better operating systems if you wish to use proprietary software, even the BSDs would be a better choice. Why come along the muck up the ecosystem we built according to our ideology? Using freedom to piss it away. Nice. GNU/Linux is the virtual America.
Why do you assume that the people who are running "pure" desktops aren't also pragmatic?
To cite the 3 examples FTFA, I don't use skype, I don't run windows apps under wine, and the video card in this box is an ati ... it does everything I want, the way I want it, at no cost to either my freedom or my bank account in terms of software ... How is that not pragmatic?
History is full of people who passionately sought purity over co-existence and pragmatism. Here are a few:
Adolph Hitler
David Duke
Emperor Hirohito
Osama Bin Laden
The Hutus
Joseph Stalin
Richard Stallman
I'll go for peaceful co-existence any time. Live and let live, brother.
Here's a little story I wrote a year or so again, and now this same ugly topic is back again. I hope you find it amusing.
http://www.moonviewscientific.com/essays/remember_the_internet.html
This is what happens when a venture is noticed by those who just want it all for themselves. They buy their "share" into it, then start altering it from inside.
Linux started as something slightly, if not very, different, but now as every second smart-ass asks themselves a question "Should we not make Linux a commercial alternative to X?", these sort of questions start to appear.
With that kind of thinking Linux ends up being the same kind of lousy crap just about any closed source code product potentially is - a black box of secrets with a tag that says "We guarantee you it works!"
Well, bullshit. Yes, it should remain pure. But most of your wise-ass friends, who pretend to know the way world works would want you to think otherwise. After all, how can something that is developed for nothing in return succeed. Is not all time money, they think. The truth is give anything time and it stands up. Linux is not an example modern economists like to give, because frankly their school of thought cannot fit the concept.
Ok, I admit I read the article. Here's the sound byte that I think best summarizes the problem:
"If the code works, let it be."
That's the rub. My *personal* experience: closed source userspace software is at best, "ok". Closed source *kernel drivers* suck ass.
Betaware open source is, well, betaware. That's why it's called betaware. Once I learned to distinguish a work-in-progress from a works-right-now version, I was a lot happier.
I learned that if I was going to experiment with betaware I should expect to be burned now and then, hence why I'm waiting for KDE 4.1 to come out instead of trying to install KDE 4.0, which I *evaluated* with some flavor of the week LiveCD KDE4.0 disk a while ago (I think it was OpenSuSE + KDE 4.0) and decided it wasn't ready for me yet.
My experience with closed software? Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Kids games for Windows. All of it buggy, all of it unfixable. I jumped ship to Linux in 1997 and I've never really looked back. When I bought my wife her laptop (Lenovo x86, 512MB ram) about 18 months ago, it came preinstalled with XP. I left it on for the kids to play their games on it (CIV 3, The sims). I evaluated it, and I found it wanting again. I didn't like the model where I fork over $$ and then I'm "given" something which may or may not work correctly. I didn't like being dependent on __Microsoft__ to *fix* problems with the laptop.
My experience with closed kernel drivers? Well, the prime suspect for me has been: **NVIDIA**. In every last case when I *chose* to use NVIDIA's driver just so I could get accelerated 3D on one of my 5 computers. There has always been some trouble getting it to work, from the relatively minor (configure XF86Config file and then xorg.config), to: tweak the driver's access to the card involving something called AGPGART, to the seriously *I'm-so-screwed* (upgrading my Linux kernel in Debian only to discover that there's no precompiled Nvidia driver for the newer Linux kernel, and discovering all of my 5 Nvidia cards are now *legacy* (translation: Screw You! Get a new card if you want to use our latest drivers)), so now-I-have-to-recompile-my-own-Nvidia-driver-but-I'm-screwed-because-of-a-GPL-only-symbol-not-available-for-Nvidia.
That was the breaking point for me. I haven't used Nvidia's drivers for 20 months ago, until I had to get my mythtv video output to out the svideo port so I could display it on my TV. Painful? Hell yes! I spent something like 8 hours having to diagnose the problems with getting Nvidia's legacy software to recompile into a nice deb package so I could manage it and I had to find a version of the Linux kernel that didn't have the GPL-only symbol that Nvidia's legacy driver needed to work. I did some research on that (Thanks Google!), to find out at some point (2.6.24 I believe), the symbol in question is configured as GPL-only by default. NVdia's response was to call it a Linux kernel "regression". My response to that is "screw you Nvidia! If your driver had been GPL to begin with, then I wouldn't have to have been doing the "masochist dance"; the driver would have already been packaged and just an apt-get install Nvidia-driver away.
I'm been a Debian testing user for 4 years this fall (switched from Mandrake when it was flaky once too often for me) and I love Debian. I love their software model: The software is continuously upgradeable. Never, ever, have to reinstall a newer version, you upgrade in place, automatic package resolution, huge database of packaged software. Their packaging guidelines are awesome. I even learned how to make my own deb packages using their helper applications. All of my boxes run Debian now.
As it stands now? The only closed source software that I'm using now is Adobe's Flash plugin. I've evaluated Gnash's plugin from time to time to see if it was ready to take over so I wouldn't need to use it anymore. It's just about time for me to try again. If I can
a) Get it to play youtube videos consistently without crashing
b) Get it to work with the Firefox plu
Those who push for "pure" desktops are supposed freedom advocates, but they don't want to advocate the freedom of allowing users to use whatever software they want.
OSS software is great. I wish more software was open. I wish Nvidia would provide open drivers.
But what I really want more than anything, is to run the software I need to make my box work.
For those who want a pure box, then run it. Don't try to force it on me however.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I really don't care. I'm gonna use whatever program I need to use to service my needs. If it behaves, great, if not I'm looking for something else.
I expect that there are more realists and people who use linux and other such software because it works and doesn't crash as opposed to it being pure OSS.
The user should be able to choose. This is why we have Ubuntu and Gobuntu as separate distros. My own personal policy is "use the best tool for the job", regardless of whether it's GPL, APSL, CCDL, or MSEULA.
I personally like the idea of having a distro which, at install, offers to either install the "Borg Edition for n00bs" with proprietary drivers, codecs, etc, or to install the "Freetard Edition for RMS" with only GPL-compatible code.
Those using pirated Tinysoft signatures(TM) are a real threat to society and should all be thrown in jail.
Whether he or she wants a completely free desktop or just wants functionality.
Is this even a real question? You could paraphrase it to: "Should open source and closed source software be segregated?".
First problem: The software-using community is not a monolithic entity that makes these types of decisions
Second problem: Even if we were a hive-mind borg-like entity that the submitter implies, how do we create a consensus and enforce it?
Third problem: With the advent of networking, no computer is an island, and the entire computing world is a massive and complex ecosystem. Closed source and open source solutions WILL interoperate, no matter what some doofy-ass slashdot submitter cares to ponder. Is this person going to stop browsing sites with his "pristine" desktop that he can't access the source code to?
In short, don't fall for this troll and get into heated philosophical debates about a bunch of smoke and mirrors.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
``Should the Linux Desktop Be "Pure?"''
There is no "the Linux Desktop". And if the question is if there should be one, the answer is no.
There should be choice. That way, those who want to have "pure" systems can do so. And those who have other preferences can have it their way.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Closed source doesn't work very well within an open/free environment such as a GNU/Linux distribution since they are distributed as binaries, these binaries are linked with libraries.
Anyone who has tried running closed source Linux applications know that there are always problems with mismatched library versions and stupid things like absolute paths etc.
If we take debian or ubuntu as an example they compile everything against their own set of libraries and distribute the resulting binaries in their package system. So the binary executables always match the compiled libraries. This may also include patching of the applications source so that it works with stuff that is unique for that distribution. This binary will work well on the system it was compiled for, but it probably won't work at all under some other distribution, like RHEL.
The creator of a closed source binary has to compile it so that it works on every distribution. This is usually done by statically linking all libraries, which consumes a lot of unnecessary RAM and uses up disk space. If they fail, which they often do, the different distributions can do
nothing (except ugly hacks) to get the application working in their environment.
Then of course there's the even more annoying problem with platforms. Debian supports the following platforms: x86-32, x86-64, PowerPC, SPARC, DEC Alpha, ARM, MIPS, HPPA, S390, IA-64
Almost all of the packages in the distribution are compiled for all these platforms. Do you think a closed source company will make a binary for all these platforms? No. In 9 cases out of 10 they'll compile it for x86-32 and nothing more.
Just ask yourself, what programs do you have the most problems with in the distribution you're using? Closed source or open source?
Some examples of closed source applications and their flaws:
Adobe Flash - no amd64-support (!) = nspluginwrapper. Almost every time firefox crashes it's because of Flash.
ATI's and nVidia's binary blob drivers: crashes, taints my kernel.
Skype: A lot of crashes
Closed source applications in GNU/Linux leads to a lot of problems, problems that the community can't fix. GNU and Linux are designed for open/free applications and it simply mixes very badly with closed source stuff.
GNU/GPL/FOSS makes a great philosophy and a terrible religion!
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The author really likes skype. A lot. He has an nvidia card. He didn't do his research. He claims "Despite their concern, I would point out that NVIDIA has a fairly decent track record with bug control and, mysteriously, Linux developers have been able to make things work on their end despite this issue with the licensing behind the current closed source NVIDIA driver. " yet according to https://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Linux_Graphics_Essay the proprietary nvidia and ati drivers and other binary drivers are regular features in the list of top kernel oops. When he talks about mp3s and encrypted DVDs and binary wireless drivers in the same sentence he is clearly confusing the issues of copyright license, software patents and the legality of breaking DRM and the like. I can easily play and encode mp3s and watch encrypted DVDs using only free software, that's free as in speech. His arguments are based on misunderstandings and poor research so they're not very interesting. He also completely misses the fact that the Linux kernel contains non-free and unattributable code which could be the subject of a much more interesting article.
If I have things to do I'll use as much free software as possible to get it done, even if that requires a little extra hassle. But I'm not going to reorder my life just to be "pure". Additionally, I figure it's better if people are using OS'es that are 95% free than not using a free system at all. What is important is for the community to continue pushing, requesting, pleading and working towards the goal of 100% purity.
Gee whiz yeah let's discuss this! We certainly have nothing better to do and our discussion will move mountains! For after all we chitchatters are the movers - right?
What utter rubbish. Can't get any better topics for people to digg, Slashdot?
To answer this article's question: Yes.
Why not give the users a choice? Why should the developers of a Linux distrobution have complete control over what you install? As long as installing the closed source software doesn't violate any licensing and works well why not use it? If open source advocates don't like it they should code something that works as well or better than the closed source application.
And you can be 100% sure to stop things in their tracks.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
we start dirty -or dusty (e.g. closed source)
but will eventually end up pure : )
make a Linux distro with no closed source code, I really want to see more open source support of third party hardware drivers. Forcing distros to be pure 100% open source code will do that. Open source Linux driver support is really really bad and forces me to use NDISWrapper and hack the Windows XP drivers to work under Linux for wireless cards.
Split up open source developers into teams:
Team #1 writes Kernel and Drivers.
Team #2 writes the main OS support programs and libraries.
Team #3 writes third party software support to do the same thing that commercial software does but under an open source license.
Team #4 writes Internet and web server applications.
Team #5 writes database and email and calendar programs and servers.
Team #6 Debugs and does quality control for the other teams.
Team #7 Writes documentation and books on open source projects.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
How would you promote software freedom if people is unable to use free software?
Case in point: where I work the email client is Lotus Notes. There's no Linux Notes client that I know of, I use the windows version in wine. So, I have two options, either accept some non-free software in my computer or use MS-Windows.
Mandriva allows you to choose between purist and pragmatist versions. Just check the appropriate radio button when you download.
Gentoo only installs non-free stuff if you tell it to do so, since you have complete control over the entire installation process and everything is built from the source.
I'm sure there are other well known distributions that offer a choice is well.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
No, I use Debian, so a team of people have done that for me. This might not be a complete check but it's more than you can say for non free software. I trust my MD5 checksum correct Debian CD far more than a crapware loaded Dell.
After install, all the usual things you do to check non free software are done. There's no WGA type daily encrypted communications leaving my network. How about yours?
The above is not a troll, but a legitimate point. There could just as easily be malicious code hidden somewhere in an open-source distribution as it could be in a proprietary nVidia driver. Not likely in either case, but still possible. And in either case, how would you know?
In fact, if I were a terrorist or a nation-state, I'd consider building a team that becomes a major and prolific contributor to a few high profile OSS projects like, say, Apache or Sendmail.
A few innocuous, well-placed lines of code and suddenly you'd be in a position to shut down half the internet.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I ended up using ndiswrapper to get the built-in wireless card for my notebook working. It's a Broadcom 4306 so there isn't much choice. The open source drivers (bcm43xx and another one I don't remember) I tried would not connect to my WAP if I enabled *any* level of security which is completely unacceptable to me. I need the laptop to work and frequently my only way to access the Internet with it is via a wireless connection. Thus, I end up using ndiswrapper.
The alternative to not using ndiswrapper is to not run Linux and run Windoze on it instead. That gives me a crappier laptop and doesn't solve the problem either. Every once in a while I check the state of open source drivers for it but so far, so bad.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
"Linux" "should"
I thought the whole point was to make it customizable. Does the definition of "customizable" say "except for closed source"?
It seems that the "purists" referred to are open source purists, not Linux purists. That being the case, why pick on Linux? I can see no reason beyond cheap journalistic flammability.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Linux exists and is a powerful force. I'd call that a victory. A few drivers and plugins are not open source. but the majority of software on the Linux desktop is. I never expected all Linux software to be 100% Open source.
Thats a victory in my opinion.
It allows binary blobs to interface with it. If Linus doesn't care about that in the heart of Linux "operating system(s)," who should cares about the rest of the Desktop. It seems most kernel developers are pragmatic, not rms-level purists. OpenBSD comes closer to purity than the Linux kernel, so Richard Stallman should suck Theo de Raadt's cock.
The game console is not advertised as a general purpose device. It is sold as playing games offered by the company and approved 3rd party software vendors. In the same vein, binary blob firmware is not a problem for software freedom purists. The code does not run in the general purpose CPU, it simply a low cost replacement for a ROM in the hardware. In fact, the binary blob does not have to be traditional "code" - it could just as easily be the connection list for a FPGA.
What is a problem is binary kernel drivers like Nvidia and Broadcom. There is a reverse engineered open source driver for Broadcom that doesn't crash all the time like the Windows driver. It still uses the binary blobs, however (that the end user has to extract from the Windows driver).
Skype is a problem - what's wrong with Ekiga? Our office just uses hardware ATAs and VOIP phones that don't pretend to be general purpose. A more uncomfortable case is NXclient. The protocol is documented and can be implemented, and there is a fine open source NX server (freenx), but the open clients aren't as ready for prime time. I ended up installing the nomachine free beer NX client for my Dad.
Flash won't work on unapproved operating systems. Linux users don't care, because Linux is "approved". But it won't run on FreeBSD. But Linux users don't care because FreeBSD is not Linux.
There was a time not that long ago when the open source community universally decried websites that required Flash. Yet that stopped the instant Flash became available for Linux. It demonstrates just how shallow the commitment to open source principles really is.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
My two cents.... I think that using the best available tool when you need them isn't wrong. But I think that we should always discriminate against proprietary software and use it when one really needs it i.e your a professional graphic artist and you need Photoshop or there is no open source equivalent choice available. The important thing is to let know companies that users demand free software and will always prefer free software. For example I may use the NVIDEA proprietary drivers now, but the next time a buy a video card I will go with ATI because they plan to start offering free drivers. This way we can be both "pragmatic" and "idealistic" at the same time.
I stopped. I am not a children's video game addict (I much prefer outdoor activities for fun, including but not limited to "first person shooters" as I actually own and enjoy real guns and go target shooting), so no need for the nvidia drivers, the nouveau drivers work just swell. I don't want flash advertisements at all (hanging is too good for those people who make and embed flash ads, IMO) or have any burning desire to view the bulk of youraboobtoob videos, so no flash. I seem to never use up all my minutes on my cheap cellphone plan, so no need for skype. I'm not a big pirate downloader, so the few movies I watch I watch on a normal cheap DVD player hooked to the TV. I admit I have *one* semi dodgy software, the ability to listen to MP3 streams, so I *hang my head in non pureness shame*, but for the most part, I just don't need their closed source stuff, and I never used Microsoft products at all much since 3.11 days, so no need for WINE or crossover office or anything like that. I don't hangout in 5 dollar a sip of coffee flavored frothy sugar water "trendy" cafes, so my home wired connections work just swell, and sneakernet has yet to fail me in 19 years of using computers. Made the decision to go as pure as possible when I installed the latest version of my distro. Haven't missed either bit or byte of those softwares for one second either. I would really like a legal way to do the MP3s though, I know ogg exists, but there just isn't any content out there of note in ogg. I like talk radio feeds from some normal stations, windows media or mp3 only, never even saw an ogg stream.
In Linux 2.6.24 (Ubuntu 8.04) the ipw3945 restricted rights wifi driver which worked was replaced by the iwl3943 open source driver which does not work (both written by Intel). There is no realistic chance that it will get any better. Open source operating system, yes. Open source applications, yes. Open source drivers, NO.
Happy user has become pissed off user and I am not alone. Ubuntu's poll on their forum show an 80/20 split voting 8.04 down.
What's the difference between a Linux purist and a Microsoft employee ?
One of them gets paid for their opinion.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
You are quite right concerning "free beer". Of course software authors need to make a living, and directly paying them or their employer is a valid way to accomplish that. But the discussion is about "libre", the four freedoms that users of software should have (although I would pick a different 4 freedoms for end users than Stallman - freedom from DRM is important for an end user, freedom to change the code is not, but freedom to use the code in unanticipated ways is).
Imagine a world in which Skype almost completely replaces POTS, and only closed Skype software can connect to another Skype client because of proprietary twists to the protocol. Sound familiar?
I've got a broadcom 4311 in my hp dv5000 ... and without ndiswrapper, I'm stuck at 802.11b - not g.
So, don't get me wrong, I use ubuntu for fun and suse for work, but until open source gives me full speed on my wireless connection, I'll stick with ndiswrapper... unless it means going back to windows. I'll suffer in linux, but not in windows!
And yeah, I have trouble using any secure connections as well.
It's what put the PC into every home and office.
That's bullshit. What put the PC into every home and office was the decreasing price of microprocessors. Microsoft was just riding the wave, they didn't cause it.
There was far better software available at the time than anything from Microsoft. The only reason Microsoft became part of the PC revolution was because IBM handed them a monopoly and they illegally exploited it.
If your cheap laptop came with a crappy Broadcom card, then spend $40 on a USB dongle or pcmcia card with an open source friendly chipset. In most cases, you can buy a mini-PCI card to replace the Broadcom junk and be just as convenient (no extra dongles). You can even use the open source Broadcom driver - which is more stable than the Windows driver (but doesn't have the same range).
A specific recommendation is anything with the zd1211rw chipset. Of course a retail box that actually lists the chipset in the specs is a rare find - but that is just another aspect of how proprietary software takes away your freedom.
The fact that when these things came to dominance they were the best readily available product (based on price and platform) on the market seems to totally slip by your radar.
That is absolutely wrong. Microsoft was years behind others in each of those product categories. Microsoft only succeeded because IBM handed them a monopoly on a silver platter and they ruthlessly exploited it.
but you start it off with emotionally charged nonsense that it makes your comment suspect.
I'm sorry you are too stupid to realize it, but I was there, and what I said is absolutely correct: throughout Microsoft's history, people could easily have chosen better products at the same or lower price. Microsoft is exactly the right example for what happens when short sighted and uninformed people make choices that don't take into account the long term consequences of their choices.
In all those cases, a full and honest disclosure is more than sufficient to vitiate any potential harm.
That is exactly what is missing - especially in the case of DRM. People do *not* understand the limitations of what they are buying, because the vendor is misleading and dishonest. The people shafted when their NFL videos became unplayable with no refund, or their Microsoft video store purchases, or ... have no clue what happened or why. In their mind it was simply a defective product.
And in practical terms, they are exactly right - which is why "Defective by Design" is a good anti-DRM slogan.
There's Gobuntu as well.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
Software freedom has not to do with choice nor with forcing people to use or run software. It is the software proprietors who are trying to control what software you can use (theirs, not competitors), how you use it (digital restrictions management), and what you're allowed to do with the software should you get a copy of it (via restrictive licensing).
Software freedom has to do with giving people the freedoms to run, inspect, share, and modify all published computer software. If a job needs to be done with a computer, a free software activist will endorse using or writing a free software program to do that job.
Software freedom activists explain these freedoms in compelling ways so as to convince others to run (and develop, if one is so inclined) only free software. Software freedom activists value social solidarity and see the control proprietors try to impose as unethical and a social ill. The way to combat this social ill is to teach people that we should value our freedom and work to protect it.
The problem with software choice is that it attempts to that free software (which respects your freedoms and encourages social solidarity) and proprietary software (which treats you as a subordinate and prevents you from organizing with your fellows) are equals when in fact they are opposites.
We should care how people are treated and what freedoms they have. We should value our software freedom for its own sake and act accordingly.
Digital Citizen
That is interesting. At first I was thinking" Firefox isn't Open Source, really? , and then I realized that the statement assumes GPL software is the only kind of Free as in Speech software, which it is not of course. Does anyone else know more about this "non-free" as in not-GPL stuff that is in Mozilla based software?
Gobuntu is apparently replacing Firefox with Epiphany, which is a trade-off this FOSS advocate would definately not be willing to make (nothing against epiphany.)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Which is why I am consistently amazed at those that rail against DRM, hardware locks, vendor-proprietary formats and other unwise, but legitimate, choices.
The presence of closed-source programs on your computer makes it more difficult to support the free software on the same computer. One workaround is to have one pure machine for use with free software and shared-source software and one impure machine for restrictions-managed software.
For instance, I cannot fathom how anyone could have a problem with a knowledgeable user buying a DRMed song from iTunes.
What is the Free alternative to a song by Genesis or Yes?
Same thing for a phone with a SIM-lock
North Americans buy phones with a subsidy lock because they can't walk into a phone store and buy phones without a subsidy lock.
In all those cases, a full and honest disclosure is more than sufficient to vitiate any potential harm.
Disclosure isn't enough in an oligopolized market. Case in point: Which set-top video game console sold in North America is designed to run free software?
Linux works well enough by itself and does not need
junkie windows software.
I am not a children's video game addict (I much prefer outdoor activities for fun, including but not limited to "first person shooters" as I actually own and enjoy real guns and go target shooting)
It appears you don't have minor relatives who visit you often and like to play video games. If you did, what would you do to entertain them?
Linux should be about choice, and giving users who'd like to use closed source is just fine and means more users on Linux. Ultimately, that's what matters, and in doing so brings more software, closed and open, to those who prefer open source.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
What kind of stupid question is this? Since when did Nazis or dictators have an interest in Linux?
Free means freedom right?
Then let me do what i want to do with my Linux desktop!
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
When you throw in all that stuff, you're asking the wrong question. Applications should be the best possible - regardless of source - if you want to compete in the real world. The OS including drivers should be pure (though I admit to using the nVidia drivers), the applications (office suite, graphics, browser, telephony, etc.) whatever suits you.
I mean, when Microsoft insists on Windows users using MS Office, Windows Media Player, IE, etc., we rightly get upset - why shouldn't we get upset if all Linux apps have to be "pure"?
Imagine buying a car that refused to tell you what kind of fuel it needs. Instead, you buy the proprietary fuel supplied by the maker. Sure, some garage chemists have done their best to reverse engineer the stuff, and can give you the recipe for a serviceable substitute. But you should be able to buy a car that uses a standard fuel type (or types), like regular, premium, diesel, kerosene, jet fuel, methanol, ethanol, etc, and buy compatible fuel from multiple vendors. Keeping the fuel specs secret is just a lock-in technique, and restricts the buyers freedom to use his vehicle.
The key word here is "SHOULD", not "MUST". Until there are perfect replacements for proprietary software (and video drivers), GNU/Linux distributions MUST please the user. It's no use having a "100% Pure" distro if the user loves youtube and the distro can't play youtube videos.
According to Stallman, the first software freedom is the ability to RUN software. By having only "pure" distros, you strip away that first freedom from the user.
the Mozilla Foundation Gecko-based browser distributed under the Trademarked name and dress "Firefox" can ONLY be distributed by them with that branding according to the license. You are more than free to download the exact same source code minus the little orange "fox" artwork and do whatever you want to under the 3 open source licenses they support. But most distros want to use the same firefox that is distributed from the Firefox website... that is not "free enough" software. This is where Debian renamed their source-based repositories "Ice Weasel" and there's a few other clever names for the non-branded "Firefox".
Let them play with the cats and dogs, play around outside, walk to the lake, go splash in the water or go fishing, stuff like that I guess. Go climb some trees, go exploring, look at bugs with a magnifying glass, play with the shortwave radios and listen to odd noises and foreign languages, break out the telescope at night, just anything but slapping a video in the machine or having them sit and shoot space aliens or whatever on the other screen. Give them a junk lawnmower and some wrenches, let them take it apart, explain how the parts work to them. I could go on but you get the drift. I just don't see any need for video game addiction, nor organized team sports for that matter, if you want me to expand on this. I think getting kids addicted to the "big leagues" early on, using the schools as psychologically coercive farm teams to be fair about it, just wastes their time and way too many of them think they will be some pro ball player one day and waste thousands of hours on that. IMO, best thing to help inner city kids to take education seriously, take the damn balls away from them. Best things to keep suburban kids from going nihilistic crazy and getting obese, take the (usually violently obscene) video games away. And it is a real ripoff paying local property taxes so that the elementary and middle schools can force addict them to professional team sports, and equally a ripoff where the public airwave broadcasters dedicate one third of the non commercial time on the local news to "sports", which for the most part equates with big league team sports. Then you see the results later on in our society where there is this huge adult interest in the local big "team", when most of the population can't even name their two senators or even one supreme court judge, and the local community has crumbling infrastructure but some huge sports stadium that cost hundreds of millions.
It is an issue of priorities and rationality. I've been in the position of caring for nieces and nephews a lot over the years (they are all grown adults now), and not one time have I had to resort to the video game babysitter or the boob tube babysitter or the "big leagues" addiction babysitter, and we always had fun and interesting times, at least I don't recall any complaints, they always seemed to like their times with me because I *cared about them*, I didn't shuffle off the responsibility to some electronic gadget. Zoos and museums yes, quake and duke nukem, are you kidding? Rock climbing over Guitar Hero? Building their own clubhouse with scrap wood out back over second life or the sims?
I am fully aware that this is a minority viewpoint on slashdot, as that is part of the nerd stereotype, but frankly, I just never saw the need or rationality for becoming game addicted. And I have seen it too, even though it will be protested widely, I have seen even grown adults addicted to video games and they honestly can't see how sadly pathetic it is, and all of them will state they aren't addicted, just like career alcoholics will insist they have no problems with it and are just social drinkers. Frankly, asking "what to do" when you can't think of anything but video games is negating an entire species-home sapiens-existence up to 25 years ago like it never happened. There is a *huge* variety of things you can do with kids and playing and helping them learn and just have fun that have nothing to do with video games. If they are coming into your home pre addicted, I seriously question their parenting if that is the only thing they want to do.
HTH, don't take anything I said personally, I wanted to explain this adequately, because it is an important issue, and give the reasons for it and suggest just a few alternatives.
I am a Debian Developer. Depending on the package, I sometimes work quite close with the upstream developer, sometimes quite far. But the main work I do is:
I am not by far as familiar with the code as the upstream authors, I am familiar only with certain well-known details. So, yes, there is a safety layer in there, but it's not as thick as you seem to assume
The only people who care about whether a piece of software is free as in speech, open source, free as in beer, yada yada yada are developers and those whose for whom ideological concerns transcend practical necessities.
Expecting the average user to CARE AT ALL is pretty damned arrogant if you ask me.
The average user wants their computer to work, end of story. The software that runs on their computer is not a political or religious issue to them. If the computer works well, then they are happy. If it does not work well, then they are unhappy. They only care about licensing to the extent that a license requires payment for the software to be used.
I for one am kind of sick of having to beat Fedora and Redhat into shape using 3rd party repositories and my own hacks because the developers are too snooty to include Nvidia or ATI drivers, MP3 support, mplayer, etc, etc, etc.
I do care whether something is open source, but not because I have some axe to grind against commercial software. I care because open source code tends to have fewer bugs because there are many, many more eyes that can look at it.
That being said, if a free as in beer piece of code works, I'm going to use it, and I'll be damned if I'm going to apologize to some self appointed moralists for doing so.
I like the GPL because it prevents someone from taking code that is open source and making it closed source. It prevents someone form pulling an IPF. But that being said, issues such as that are a distant second behind "does the code work?"
If you're worried about Nvidia or skype or whoever suddenly dropping support for linux, then don't use their stuff. Worrying about what OTHER people will do or not do is called being a busybody and people like that are universally despised.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
If they want pure Open Source with zero proprietary licenses on any of the software they use, let them.
If they want some Open Source with a little proprietary software, they can feel free to do that too.
If they want only proprietary software, then let them use Windows.
Unix, and therefore Linux, is about using the best tool for the job. If free software doesn't have an option suitable to fix a user problem, then the user should pick whatever software option they like that does, whether it is Free as in Speech or not. The best tool for every person i
For a large number of people, it comes down to "works vs. doesn't work".
Skype works, so people use it.
NVidia drivers make their dual-head monitors work smoothly, so people use it.
The majority of people who are using Linux -- the VAST majority -- are doing so not out of some political ideology but out of what essentially boils down to a business need (even if they're doing so in their private lives). The majority of users are weighing "usability, stability and uptime" against other platforms and choosing Linux based on that criteria.
There's a reason why Apple laptops are so dominant in geek circles. It's because Apple gets the first part of that equation -- usability -- extremely well, and doesn't sacrifice much of the other two in order to get it.
That is not only acceptable to me, I think it should be the norm. I would hate to believe I was using Gentoo, Red Hat, or any other distribution for a period of time and then suddenly discover I was using a derivative, modified by whom and god knows how. When I see the Fox, I want to know that it is the same Firefox that I used yesterday on a completely different distribution (assuming the two are using the same version number.)
;-)
Thanks for clarifying, and making me like Firefox that much more
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
This issue is not forcing others to use only Free Software--even if proprietary software is sacrificing freedom, it is everyone's personal choice whether or not they want to sign away their own freedom. The real issue is informing users about the differences between free and non-free and the implications and risks of non-free software so that they can make educated software decisions.
Also, accessibility and software freedom are not necessarily mutually exclusive--free software driver developers and testers just have to continue working hard at making a truly free OS viable for most users.
BTW, Wine is not necessarily using closed source software. I use Wine, a fully open source program, to run OpenMPT, a fully open source modtracker program for Windows that hasn't been ported yet.
Gentoo only installs non-free stuff if you tell it to do so, since you have complete control over the entire installation process and everything is built from the source.
Errr ... why is the last part relevant? Isn't all software always built from source? Unless its interpreted, of course, in which case there's very little to build.
I will assume you have never used/don't know about Gentoo. You'll note that there is only one sentence in my post, the first half of which talks about the install process. Thus the second part of my sentence refers specifically to that install process. Gentoo differs from most Linux distributions in that, rather than downloading pre-built binaries to your system, it downloads the source and builds it on the machine that Gentoo is being installed on using the custom options selected by the person doing the install. Gentoo is therefore much more flexible, but also not for the faint of heart, the inexperienced, or those in a rush to start using their Linux box immediately.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
It's pretty normal for a distro to patch or build their slightly differently than another. I wouldn't call it sketchy...if you don't trust the package maintainers then you shouldn't use that distro.
You forgot the "or a nation-state" part. In fact, didn't I just recently read about the Pentagon worrying about code or instructions slipped into devices and chips from countries like China? And China, in turn, worrying about using software created in the US?
Infrastructure attacks are primary targets, and it's pretty widely acknowledged that cyber-warfare is the next major battleground. And worse, it's one in which nearly anyone can play.
Some people get paid to worry about such things. And all so that other people can "live life" with their heads comfortably buried in their... ah, in the sand.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
There is no need to choose between one restriction or the other. The Linux kernel should always be free and there should always be enough free software to available to assemble a respectable, even superior, distro, but that's very different from saying that every distro "should" be assembled completely from free software. In fact, a good argument could be made that such a restriction would, in itself, make the software less than "free". Even the GPL tolerates coexistence with closed software, if somewhat begrudgingly and with the view that it is "lesser".
For any given commodity there are clusters of customers who share a common set of interests and tastes. Whenever such a cluster reaches sufficient size and stability it will support it's own customized version of that commodity. So long as there is a sufficiently large and stable community of people who support pure OSS the market (if it's a free market) will provide at least one, and probably several, pure OSS distros. But as long as that group of people is not representative of the entire market there will also be distros that are not pure OSS. It would be foolish to hope or strive for any other arrangement.
I suppose this will offend a bit, but that is an absurd statement. What percentage of the people using any OS know and trust the people rolling it? I can go by reputation, or if I am smart I can reject a given OS because they have a history of being shady [ I won't mention the M word ;-) ], but I ultimately have to use something based on reputation and a solid dose of faith unless I roll my own.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
.
Let's all stop for the moment and consider the utility and sales potential of a mass market PC that ships without an operating system or high level languages.
In an era when the enthusiast's "access to source" meant reading the BASIC program listings in "Creative Computing."
1975 BASIC for the Altair.
Microsoft has three employees and revenues of $16,000.
1976 Microsoft sells an enhanced basic to GE, NCR and Citibank.
Seven employees and revenues of $22,00
1977 Microsoft FORTRAN. MBASIC for the Commodore PET and TRS-80. Applesoft BASIC.
Nine employees and revenues of $382,000.
1978 COBOL-80. Microsoft enters the world market with ASCII Microsoft - Japan.
Thirteen employees and revenues of $1,400,000.
1979 Microsoft 8080 BASIC is the first product for the micro to win the ICP Million Dollar Award.
MBASIC for the 8086. The first high level language for the new 16-bit micro.
Twenty-eight employees and revenues of $2,400,000.
1980 The Z-80 SoftCard. Microsoft XENIX OS for 16 bit CPUs.
Forty employees and revenues of $7,500,000.
1981 MS-DOS for the IBM PC and anyone else who wants it. There is an MS-DOS universe before the birth of the clones. There is also MBASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL and Pascal.
128 employees and revenues of $16,000,000.
Microsoft's Timeline from 1975
Ok, to some people, no. But consider that the apps like Photoshop and Flash that my wife and I use are already odd-man-out programs that feel like legacy when we run them in qemu virtualization. The paradigm shift has occurred. The battle is being won for early adopters. The rest is mop-up.
both pure and non-pure desktops are already available... I suspect it will stay that way. It is wise for any open source user to develop an awareness of these issues and decide what lines to cross. besides, if the answer to the question in the title is no, then what do you propose we do? build some sort of free software enforcement team, sneak in through the duct work, and assassinate anyone sneaking a binary into a linux distro?.... on second thought, maybe that isn't such a bad idea....
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
Anything else is just religion.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I want FOSS to be about giving people options. More options = more freedom. It is no more wrong for Linux to have proprietary apps than it is for Open Source apps to be ported to Windows or Mac or (before it was free) Java or for FOSS apps to be written with .net.
I would like to remind you, if people could not mix and match, Firefox would never have caught on, and everyone would still design websites using non-standard HTML and CSS and IE would be the despot of the web (and MS likely never would have bothered creating IE 7 which helped IE become a modern browser). If nobody's hardware worked and nobody's must have apps like Flash Player worked, nobody would ever switch to Linux.
It is also worth mentioning that if MS didn't exist, Linux couldn't have existed. MS, in cooperation with IBM, standardized the PC market. If the 386 architecture had not caught on, Linux would never have become more than a pet project for Linus Torvalds, since nobody else would have had hardware that worked with the early releases (originally, Linux was written by Torvalds so he could learn about the 386 platform, and thus is was very 386 dependent, it wasn't until later that it would be ported to every architecture imaginable).
The Gospel according to lolcat
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think people should stop thinking about how pure your desktop/OS/toaster/"insert what you wish" is and start talking about freedom.
Nobody forces you to use non-open-source(GPLed or not) software, you have the choice.
Also if you want to try out the new XZY closed-source driver then you must have the choice to do it.
Open-source supporters(and I am one)like to talk about freedom in a whole bunch of things, and I think this is a good way of taking this thoughts into action.
People should always have the right to choose even if the majority think is wrong, as long as it is not related to anyone else they should do whatever is their wish, and I don't see how using closed-source sofware in a open-source OS on my own computer is going to be anyone's business.
Know? I have no idea. But that wasn't what he said
Trust? All of them. Otherwise they would not be using it.
How is doing that, then, not an allocation of a degree of trust? You trust that the reputation is accurate. Coupled with your "dose of faith", you trust that there is a low chance of the maintainer being malicious. Thus you trust the maintainer. If any sane user didn't trust these things, they would not use the distro.
The summary specifically mentions skype as being popular on linux, but as far as I know skype is extremely unstable on linux. On the wine db the various versions of skype are rated from garbage to bronze at best. Anyone wanna shed some light on this?
That is a very absurd statement. I don't trust the government, but I use the roads and other government controlled resources and services all of the time. To hear you tell it there are two kinds of people:
Ah ... see, there is the source of our disconnect. You think trust comes in degrees ;-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Should the Linux Desktop Be "Pure?"
What "The Linux Desktop" are you talking about? Yours? It should be whatever you want it to be. Mine? It should be whatever I want it to be. RedHat's, Debian's, KDE's, Gnome's, XFCE's, Linus's, RMS's - they should each be what they want it to be.
What kind of bizarro world is this guy living in where an operating system's desktop has one official version? How could you stand limiting yourself like that? It would be... well it would be like running Windows or Mac, and what madman would choose that tortured fate?
This is Free. Do whatcha like. Pretty cool, huh?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Everybody seems to be focusing on bugs but the most important problem with proprietary software is that you are giving control over you're live to a third party. The software we are using is becoming more and more ingrained in our lives. For every piece of proprietary software you have on you're PC the more control you give to the company developing that software. There is no law and control in place that forces these companies to act ethically. The whole open source process force companies to act ethically and even if they don't there is a whole list of controls in place from legal to political that helps out every now and then. Can you really trust a person you have never met or company that only responsibility is to make money. By all means use proprietary software but know what you are doing.
I've done machine code which didn't have any source to build from. Back in the early 80's, writing assembly and machine code really weren't that different and neither was more difficult than the other. I suspect that machine code is significantly more complex for the AMD64 than it used to be for the Z80.
Put identity in the browser.
Should the Linux desktop be pure? That means every single Linux desktop should be pure. That means that RMS should make a GPLv4 license that says that you may only use this program if you have a completely free software desktop. So no.
Here be signatures
In security, an entity being "trusted" doesn't mean you always have high regard for the ethics of the people who control it. It simply means you are using it knowing you have no effective defenses against getting screwed by it. This type of trust is a necessary evil, and the goal is to minimize it.
It's also not for those who like knowing that the component they tested with is the same one they deployed on other important machines. I applaud the Gentoo authors for their efforts to add 'secret sauce' to package building. But when gmake, glibc, and gcc changes seriously modify compilation behavior, it's very dangerous to work with such dynamic systems in a production environment.
This is a question for which there is no final "yes" or "no". I believe there are parts which should be "pure". For example, the kernel and the parts that make the system "usable". Now, I do not believe that this should be at the cost of a usable system. In an ideal world, NVidia drivers would be open (as should wifi drivers). I also believe that Flash should be open, to allow for cross-platform capabilities (and to stop it being an unstable, buggy POS). I do not, however, believe that people should refuse to use software that isn't open. I use the NVidia drivers myself, for example. I do, however, use the OpenJDK in preference to Sun's Java and would use a free alternative to Flash and the NVidia drivers were they available (I'm actually going to have a crack at GNash after I've finished typing this comment).
On the flip-side, I don't see a problem with people using proprietary apps if that's what floats their boat. I believe closed source games are better than open source games because I see games as similar to films and books. Imagine what The Stand or It would have been like if the community had written them instead of Stephen King. I see games in the same light.
Anyway, a balanced post (so it'll probably be modded down ;P)
I thought a "pure" desktop was the aim of Gobuntu http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/gobuntu
The choice should be with the user, not with the distribution.
If I want to fill my desktop and PC with tons of software that is closed and made by Microsoft or whomever you dislike, that is MY choice. It is My PC so I do whith it what I want.
Yes, I use NVidia drivers that are closed source. Yes I have Opera running. Yes I have other software that I payed for.
I use openSUSE and there I can select between an OSS and a Non-OSS. That way I can decide myself wether I want it pure or not.
The reason they did it was because some people were moaning about Non-OSS software in the distribution and that that wa s what holding SUSE (now openSUSE) back, so they changed it.
And that is were the choice should be. With the user, not with the distribution, not with some freak with a beard.
To me it is about choice and if I have a duistribution that does not give me that choice (I do not know if they exist) that that is NOT a good thing.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I guess that depends on the definition of free.
Acording to GPL , it's more free because it makes sure that any derivatives are also under GPL , and thus free.
According to BSD , it's more free because this restriction doesn't apply , thus giving more freedom to derivative work.
I guess freedom is relative.
Slipping shoelaces ?
The only closed source software on my machine is the Flash plug-in, which lurks behind the no-flash plug-in. Every time I give in to temptation and view some Flash thingie, I expect it to hog half of my CPU, crash Firefox, take away the sound from other apps and refuse to shut down for anything less than a kill signal. Yes, Flash has been gradually getting better, but it still remains the one big sore spot on my computer and the reason I won't let any other proprietary software on it to mess things up even more.
So, hell yeah, I want a pure free software system.
There's a difference : you don't have a chance but to you the roads build by the government.
It would be nice if someone asked me what kind of roads i wanted , but that's not really practical :-)
However , for an OS , you can make that choice , and that a good thing . Remember 'Trusted Computing' ? I sure don't trust any OS that would use that , so i won't use it.
Slipping shoelaces ?
Ok , drinking and typing is a bad idea . Take 2 :
There's a difference : you don't have a choice but to use the roads build by the government.
It would be nice if someone asked me what kind of roads i wanted , but that's not really practical :-)
However , for an OS , you can make that choice , and that a good thing . Remember 'Trusted Computing' ? I sure don't trust any OS that would use that , so i won't use it.
Slipping shoelaces ?
Hey, don't blame Linux users for that Wine stuff! The use of Wine is a tradition that dates back to ancient China 9000 B.C.!
I agree that its overuse causes some problems tho.
Compromising is something you do at the end, you don't do it at the start. Produce as clean a Linux as possible, then at the end when there are no other options remaining you compromise with closed source solutions for the few remaining problems. If you start with the idea that closed source is okay you will soon enough end up not even trying anymore and before you know it you have a horrible mess of closed code that even with the best efforts you can't open up anymore and everyone wondering why you even bother. Proof? Video. Both the cards and video playback. Why did Ati take so long to go open? Why is Nvidia still not doing it? Because they don't want to? no, because they adopted closed source code into their drivers to the point where they can't just opensource their drivers because not all the code is theirs. Why was DVD playback an issue for so long? Because Linux is free and DVD playback isn't. Allow closed source of any kind and sooner or later it will bite you in the ass. Look at MS itself with Flash. They allowed it and now are faced with the fact that the web, their own internet explorer NEEDS a 3rd party tool they don't control to function. Do you think MS is pushing Silverlight because they want this tool? No, it is because they want to break the dependency on Adobe for making the web work. You can see it on linux where you have to jump through hoops to make it Flash work on anything but the most basic install AND because that was allowed it Flash has become bigger and more widespread making Linux even more dependent on having Flash. Without any effort to produce a clean linux at least as the base the OS would pretty soon be just the same a Windows, closed drivers everywhere were you have no idea what the hell what it is doing. Let the compromises happen on the users desktop, not at the developers.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Rather than arguing over whether the Linux desktop should be pure or not, isn't a better solution to do as someone else suggested further back and compromise. Create two versions, one that is essentially for the purists and thus more suitable for specialists who like to tinker with things; and one that is more practical in terms of mass appeal. This would essentially kill two birds with one stone and help to widen the appeal and use of the Linux desktop by the masses, wouldn't it? Just a thought...
``That is not only acceptable to me, I think it should be the norm. I would hate to believe I was using Gentoo, Red Hat, or any other distribution for a period of time and then suddenly discover I was using a derivative, modified by whom and god knows how. When I see the Fox, I want to know that it is the same Firefox that I used yesterday on a completely different distribution (assuming the two are using the same version number.)''
This, of course, is exactly what trademarks are for.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
A friend of mine once emailed Stallman and asked if he used any proprietary code, like an MP3 player, and he said yes, he could play MP3s on his computer. So I think if even RMS isn't going to run a 100% pure desktop, the question of if anyone else will is pretty moot.
I don't know if there's a name for it, but that fallacy is one of the most annoying: "This problem you're worried about isn't big enough; worry about this other bigger one"
Wouldn't a physicist, for example, be justified in saying the whole Zimbabwe thing is pretty unimportant and everyone should be worried about fusion power, which if achieved would be far more important.
And so on.
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
All the artwork, logos, and the program name.
Mozilla won't let Debian distribute their own Firefox build called Firefox with the Firefox logo. Hence Debian's version was renamed IceWeasel, and later IceCat to appease angry Mozilla developers, and given different artwork.
I raised this issue to RMS during the GPL 3 discussion period, but he doesn't think it's enough of an issue to be bothersome. Me, I disagree--consider if Apple took some GPL software, stuck an iPod interface on it, and released it as a desktop media player. They could release the source, and you still wouldn't be able to redistribute it, because the iPod UI is heavily trademarked.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
When Stallman doesn't think something is an issue, that should be a red flag for you that you are missing something if you think it is one. Here is what you are missing: You can redistribute it, in two different ways :
What you cannot do is modify the code, but leave the artwork the same. (I know redistribution is allowed because I am currently using Firefox, which has the Firefox name and logo, and came from my distributions repository.)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I really think that a lot of "free software advocates" simply fear that when people start using proprietary software, they could realize that some of their free software is really bad (lacking features, bad UI, half complete and rarely updated). As an example, the last two/three times I went to some friends to look at some divx on their linux pc, they spent almost an hour to recompile mplayer... some of the not "free software fanatics" suggested to rent a divx player somewhere instead...
a few choose OS X or Solaris, but for most people, they use Linux.
Check out the market share of OS X vs Linux. OS X is (still) a whopping 900% ahead.
Show a man some news, distract him for an hour. Show a man some mod points, distract him for the rest of his life.
After a bout of trying to get a couple things working on my home desktop, I was asking myself "why the #$%^#$ can't Linux Just Work?" I looked at what was giving me trouble (a webcam, VMWare Workstation) and realized that it was only the closed-source software that was a problem. The FOSS part of my desktop has been relatively trouble-free (or if not, easily fixed with a forum visit). So - I'm all for pragmatism, but I have to admit that all-open-source WORKS, but only within a pure FOSS ecosystem. My system is up-to-date, rarely broken by repository updates, and problems are usually fixed on a timely basis by the community. Mixing closed- and open- is where I spend hours in fruitless troubleshooting.
As far as I'm concerned, having to change the UI of the software in order to be allowed to redistribute it should make it non-free software. The Debian maintainers apparently agree.
Licenses that only allow you to distribute source unmodified, like Dan Bernstein's old Qmail licenses, have also been declared unacceptable by free software advocates.
So I think in this case, Stallman made a mistake, probably because he doesn't value user interface design and thinks it's a trivial job to rip and replace it.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I want to leave it; what should I take instead?
A band that is willing to offer their music on terms to which you agree.
I knew that. So does there exist a widely used method to search for Free bands that fans of a given proprietary band would like, in order to fill a computer that runs free software with free music?
a majority of consumers are indifferent to Linux.
Or equivalently:
fifty-one percent of consumers are indifferent to Linux.
Likewise, a majority of consumers are indifferent to Mac OS X, simply because over half of all PCs sold in the first half of 2008 run Windows. Yet the Asus Eee PC with a Linux operating system based on Xandros sells nearly two million units in the first half of 2008.
I run a stripped down Windoze box with VLC and S-video out as a media player.
What brand do you recommend? If self-built, what guide to building a media PC do you recommend?
Another friend uses xmbc on an original xbox.
Which only helps to demonstrate a market for a homebrew-capable console.
I believe that in the open-source metaphor ... you would go learn some instruments with your buddies and make your own music, no?
There's one little problem with that: subconscious copying. In computer programming, it's fairly easy to avoid reading other people's code, and Compaq used a "clean room" method to ensure this when making the first fully IBM-compatible PC clone. Computer Associates v. Altai defines a test involving abstraction, filtration, and comparison to be used in cases of alleged non-literal copying. But in music, on the other hand, subconscious copying appears to be harder to avoid. See the case of Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, where George Harrison accidentally copied two phrases totaling nine notes from a song that was popular several years earlier and was found guil^H^H^H^H liable for copyright infringement. As a coder learning how to write music, what steps should I take to make sure that the same thing does not happen to me?
reverse-engineering others' SW and HW that is legally proprietary is highly hypocritical at the least.
What is the Free alternative if I want a computer with predictable capabilities including SDTV output? How can I make this happen?
Keep in mind that as problematic as the patent/copyright system is, a number of innovations have come about due to the protection afforded from the systems (especially earlier on).
Which doesn't automatically make the ends justify the specific means, of course.
I guess you're right. I think there's probably two groups...people that really "follow" their distro (read newsletters, post in forum, etc), and people who just want it to work. Or maybe most people, like me, bounce between the two. I guess I just hope that, should the distro that I use become compromised, people will spot things and post about it on sites like these.
It's not that being open source automatically makes code more trustworthy...it just removes one source of doubt (not having code). But even for the things I build myself, it's not like someone could slip some code in there and I'd know about it.
And the Fraunhoffer (mathematical) patent isn't valid in most of the countries in the world.
US and Germany.
Nice to know your money is going to a German company, isn't it!
cyber-warfare is the next major battleground /. piece on Windows being used to drive things like 911 systems. And then *really* fight for open source.
Maybe I'm reading an ambiguous statement wrong but I just wanted to point out that this is a battleground where combat is already constant, hotly contested, and very serious. And I agree with you, it's one where "nearly anyone can play". One specific thing I've wondered about is that I've read quite a few reports about schools for hacking (and virii tracked back to) the Philippines and we're well aware that the Philippines has been a staging area for terrorists for well over a decade now. In fact, there were pre-9/11 gatherings there of folks connected to Al Qaida that are listed high as things our TLAs should have paid more attention to that could have prevented the attacks.
Now, I'm as averse to blaming "the terrorists" for everything as anybody but they are real, there are many factions, and they do attack people. And from what I've read about Bin Laden's setup (iirc, there was a good piece in Parameters recently) his people are as high tech as it gets.
So, yes, we do need to worry about malware that makes spam and even most rootkits look delightful by comparison. Maybe we should all look again at the recent
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
Just because something is Open Source doesn't mean its can't be used by those who are not so knowledgeable. You can set up the Linux desktop for someone and they don't even have to know what Open Source means.
Because that's why software freedom MUST be about the freedom that others allow you to have.
Copyright means you have no rights to the code.
Pure or not, it should not be poor, first of all...
In other words it was an incredibly trivial dispute which is why you may not have heard of it.
Think about it, just about everyone who wants Unix goes with Linux, a few choose OS X or Solaris, but for most people, they use Linux.
Your point is valid. But look above for my point. If people want Unix they go with Linux. Most OS X users do not want Unix, they want an OS for the Mac they have. Most of the people who want Unix go with Linux. Most OS X users don't even know that OS X is Unix or what Unix even is.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
I guess freedom is relative.
"Subjective" is the word I would use.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
I don't use Gentoo, but I do know about it. My question was, why is the "compiler yourself" approach relevant, as in, what significant advantage does that have for the topic at hand, which is about installing only completely free software. To achieve that goal, all one has to do is install software with a license that falls in one's definition of "free". The flexibility that Gentoo's installation process provides is not relevant for such a simple task. And I admit, the part about all software being compiled from source anyway was a lame attempt at sarcasm. :)
It may feel good in some postliterate way to call it so but personally I prefer the textbook definition written by those who had a clue earlier than 1996. That Microsoft court case has really confused all of the newbies despite the fact that Microsoft could not convince the Judge of that definition you are proposing. To me it really is like calling the beige box on the desk a "hard drive".
Does Richard M. Stallman watch porn in Ogg Theora?
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
Trust isn't a warm and fuzzy feeling you get in the pit of your stomach. Trust is a choice.
Trust is making the "I know they can screw me, and I know I haven't relieved myself of dependence on them, and I know I am vulnerable should they prove irresponsible or malicious, but I'm going to run with it."
For someone in your position to be making statements like "I don't trust the government" is moronic.
You go out and systematically replace the government in your life, and put yourself in a position where you are needing nothing and taking nothing and using nothing that they provide you, you pay the overwhelming dues necessary to make that happen. That's when you get to talk about how you don't trust the government.
Until then, you're just a punk with a big mouth living in a dream world.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
I accept your apology ;-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Interesting links, thanks. I was only referring to Ubuntu though as that's who byolinux was trying to throw mud at. Canonical AFAIK are just like any other regular business, and have seen an opportunity to take Ubuntu code, package it with extras and offer it to OEMs. I don't see why this is any reflection on Ubuntu as Canonical could have done exactly the same thing with CentOS.
Btw, glad to hear you're having a good experience with the madwifi driver. I'm not. It's supposed to work with the WG311T cards too, but is very broken on Ubuntu 8.04 with the latest supported madwifi 0.9.4 driver. wlanconfig always barfs with an ioctl error, and dmesg spits out:
wifi%d: unable to attach hardware: 'Hardware didn't respond as expected' (HAL status 3)
Haven't cracked the problem yet.
Hi all, first post here. (these comments move fast as lightning here..)
I'm sure it's all been said after 700 posts, but here's my two cents.
Obviously the GPL blows the lid off of any dreams of confinement, one way or the other. You can do whatever you want, so the question of "should it be", is really moot, is it not?
In practice, pure open source has not been able to cut the mustard for most user's desktops. If it could, then we'd all switch! The philosophy of open source is great, but it's still going through quite a few growing pains.
Bottom line: When a pure open source desktop is ready for the masses, then the masses will happily use it. The numbers speak for themselves. In the day to day grind, computing is about pragmatism, not philosophy.
I am also in the camp that says we need to make a few compromises to expand the user base. The pure system is going to have to come along at its' own pace. In the mean time, the rest of us have things to do.
The problem with software choice is that it attempts to that free software (which respects your freedoms and encourages social solidarity) and proprietary software (which treats you as a subordinate and prevents you from organizing with your fellows) are equals when in fact they are opposites.
I'm not saying free software and proprietary software are equals. Far from it.
However, I prefer Opera to Firefox, a lot, indeed.
I'm not a 'software proprietor' or anything like that. Are you telling me to stop using Opera? Are you coercing me? Are you respecting my freedoms?
All this are honest questions.
I don't want you to 'explain' anything to me. I just want you to let me use, and promote, any software I want. Sometimes it is free software, sometimes it is not.
I do respect other people freedoms, as long as they respect mine.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.