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Yet Another Linux Driver Petition
Rendus writes "Just saw this over at Linux Today, a request for people to sign the Linux drivers petition. Their goal is 2 million signatures. When I signed, I was number 20." Well I've never heard of libranet, but hopefully they'll be successful in convincing a few manufacturers to either release drivers for Linux, or the specs so we can do it.
That means that, to get 2,000,000 signatures, they need 1 out of every 20 Linux Users "out there" to sign the petition. That's a -very- high percentage. You don't see that kind of turnout in almost anything. I've been told that sales-folk will reckon on between 1 in 20 and 1 in 100 actually doing anything -of those who have said they actually would-.
1% actually being interested, and 1% of those interested actually doing anything about it seem reasonable guesstimates. That would put the total at 4,000 signatures. Somewhat less than 2,000,000, but might still be enough to persuade some companies that it's worth exploring the possibility.
That, IMHO, is about all the commitment we'll ever get, until Linux matches Windows on the desktop. But a willingness to look is light-years better than a refusal to consider, which is the way it's tended to be in the past.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Why Bother?
What struck me was this:
Linux is hampered by a lack of drivers for some pc devices, notably printers.
Who cares? For printers, use PostScript. It works, and it works well -- Adobe did good, so reward them. Instead of trying to pinch pennies to get the cheapest (in the short-term) hardware, we should support quality.
(Likewise with OpenGL, SCSI, etc. etc.)
Hardware should be designed to a common interface anyway. The more we do to encourage vendors to think that way, the better off we'll be in the long run.
Instead of whining to companies about lack of custom drivers for custom variations in common hardware, we should support those companies that create standardized, generic, open interfaces, and then stick to them. Just as we do with software, we should reward quality engineering and implementation.
If it doesn't work, then we have a fundamental problem with this "Open Source" thing anyway.
Begging does not become us.
Pick One: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~stremler/sigs/sigs.html (Note - disable Javascript first!)
Coca-Cola is not a means to an end like software is. You need driver software to run hardware. Without the software, your hardware is pretty much useless. Charging for drivers is valid only if it goes into the production cost of the hardware. Or, in other words, if the driver is provided with the hardware when you buy it. Charging for the source of the drivers is absolutely unjustified.
In this scheme of things, one cannot really draw an analogy with Coca-Cola. But let me give it a try. Imagine that every soft-drink can only be drunk with a special straw that is dependant on the formula of the drink. Some soft-drink manufacturers provide the straw which will enable you to drink their product. Others dont, but provide you with enough info to make / buy a suitable straw. Coca-Cola on the other hand will sell their products to anyone, but will sell straws only to bug-eyed aliens from Mars, and absolutely refuses to provide info on which straws to buy, or how to make a suitable straw. Is this situation acceptable? I think not!
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
I agree that if a company releases its blueprints for the hardware and source code, there will indeed by cheap knock offs.
I would further say that if their interesting gizmo kept all a secret, it will be a puzzle and a challenge to see what makes it tick. This results in a second generation engineering job, not the cheap clone job of the disclosed product. I'd venture to say that those who hold secrets will face some competition with improved products that are missing the bugs. On the other side of the fence, the manufacturer who disclosed the prints only needs to appeal to the quality buying public and sell their brand.
I used to repair televisions and VCR's (when they really were worth some money.) Schematics were available. When we traced down the problem to make repairs (easy with the information,) we often found the weak spots in design. This information was passed on to the company. Better designs followed later.
There were a few manufacturers that were impossible to reach to get any repair information or parts. Not surprisingly, those manufacturers were quickly forgotten about as their products quickly left the market. Who's going to buy stuff that is unmaintainable over and over again? With the exception of Windows, this is rare.
they don't need my email. I'm not signing unless they don't require it. And I'm not the only
one.
Make a bogus, yet legitimate email address that you never intend to read. You can email me there, the message will be received, but will pour the shiny electrons into the bitbucket recyclotron. Use the command "adduser nospam" and you have an instant throwaway account!
It should be http://www.libranet.com/petition.html.
The only way hardware manufacturers will release drivers for a particular platform is if it makes financial/market sense for them to do so.
In most cases (for the more common hardware elements) it probably does, and indeed *most* companies have, even if they are not opensource.
However some of the more obscure companies will not, it doesn't make economic sense for them to do so, they have very little to gain from spending lots of money on it, they follow the 80/20 rule.
This still doesn't mean that they can't release the specs for the hardware though, particularly for older more obscure hardware. I'm suprised and dissapointed that they don't, but then again sometimes this doesn't make sense, they want you to buy the all new expensive stuff don't they, even if it wont go in your old obsolete 286.
I can't see things changing much, most of the hardware that is usefull has or will have drivers or specs released, those that don't probably never will have.
Then there is the whole opensource argument that I wont even go into... why should companies opensource their drivers and specs? Do you expect Coca Cola to give you their recipe. No, I think not.
I like the idea but I'm not sure a general petition would have much effect.
The company I currently work for received a request for the release of information specifically in relation to the Linux OS. The letter was also a general petition and seemed like a form letter since it didn't seemed to know what we specifically do (other than what our name specified). It was signed "The Linux Community" but nothing more specific than that.
A general petition is nice in principle, but it had pretty much no effect on how we do things for a couple of reasons (given by engineering and management).
1. Our company's hardware and software is mostly proprietary, and we've yet to see any reason to switch to Linux (not to say I personally wouldn't like to see how it would go) that would benefit us or our clients.
2. The letter really didn't identify any clients (corporate or private) specifically asking our company to change our OS or release hardware specs. Thus no actual impact on us in financially or in the PR area that we can tell.
3. The manner in witch the letter was written was not entirely pleasant. The implication of the letter seemed as if the author was accusing us of limiting our clients options in some malicious way, but again, it wasn't from any of our clients (that we know of) and wasn't specific at all.
4. Some engineering concerns have been raised about moving to an OS that we do not know much about compared to our own. Security, support and the cost of such migration weigh heavily on many minds regarding such a switch. Also concerns about trade secrets were also brought up.
The idea seems nice, but I'm not sure how much effect this will have. Our company responds much better to specific requests from clients, or groups of clients than just a general letter like we received. I believe that most companies react the same.
http://www.libranet.com/petition.html
numb
>We, members of the Linux community and the computing population in general, believe that you, the manufacturers of pc computing devices, should make available to Linux developers full specifications of your devices, so that Linux compatible device drivers can be produced for your products. If you feel this information is confidential, then we ask you to write, and make freely available, drivers for your products.
And the REST of the OpenSource OS market doesn't matter?
If you are going to make a petition, or sign one, why not sign one that is can work for ALL the OpenSource OSes? Or, how about ALL the Unix market?
Why does the Linux community want to replace Micro$oft as the new monopoly?
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
X - Number of Linux Users (10M according to Wayne above)
x - Number of Linux Users who give a damn about anything other than fraggin
Y - Number who read ./ and know about this cause
y - Percentage who know to put the www ahead of the URL
Z - Site capacity factor
z - Percentage who never come back after the first "this account has too many processes running,try again later"
A - Percentage who lurk everywhere and will never "Submit" even when the dreaded button says something else
a - Length of time that story will be an Article on ./
B - residence time on "Older Stuff"
b - fudge factor
With all of these variables, I estimate that the petition count will be 75,000 by 1/1/0 when the world's computing infrastructure turns into a tangled, smoking heap. Of course, I am not a coder and just factored all of the variables in my head. I just think of stupid things, I do not make them executable.
ok, RMS doesn't like it for pushing binary-only drivers. so this is not a good thing for "free software", but just for the linux-community. microsoft is not going to like UDI, because one of the main advantages of windows is, that it has drivers for everything. well, anyway i guess microsoft isn't affraid as much of linux than of the unification of the unix-market in progress, around open source and linux. unix can only win against windows when 10 different unix-vendoers stop reinventing the wheel 10 times. and this is happening with apache, samba, xfree86 and somehow also linux.
solaris x86, freebsd, SCOs openserver and unixware (and soon AIX ) are all able to run linux binaries. so users can stick with their unix-of-choice and still run the bulk of linux-software. but guess for which plattform developers are going to publish their software first... and this is going to have long-term impact.
ups, well, as i'm OT anyway, doesn anybody know why IBM did port linux to S/390 and not AIX ?