28 Nov
2004
28 Nov
'04
1:45 p.m.
Why? Because with the availability of closed drivers
the (market)
demand for open source drivers suddenly becomes as small as the
handful of Libre Software supporters like I am one. The "just make my
hardware work" type of Linux users is not interested in Open Source
drivers anymore, so why should someone still write this kind of
drivers? NVidia is the prime example. They provide closed source
drivers, a lot of (probably most) users are happy about this, NVidia
makes millions of dollars also in the Linux market. No free software
drivers? Bah, who the heck cares? And who the heck cares, that you
cannot buy a single modern 3D-card anymore, which has open source
drivers, by any manufacturer? Oh, that's not the fault of the linux
community, Matrox simply sucks, they don't provide binary only
Gone are the beautiful days, closed already (their 650, 750 and parhelia
series - binary only)
Oh BTW, just in case :)
http://www.petitiononline.com/atipet/petition.html
If RME doesn't want to support Linux for their FW card, that's fine
with me. There are still enough alternatives.
We're risking a case where the alternatives would soon be redundant
technically or discontinued. And firewire is "der letzte schrei", almost
every manufacturer has got or prepares his own firewire product.
Marek