Pressure the problem on multiple fronts

Pressure the problem on multiple fronts

Posted Oct 27, 2005 4:43 UTC (Thu) by bignose (subscriber, #40)
Parent article: Quote of the week

[Paraphrased from an earlier reply I gave elsewhere]

We have long seen many efforts to convince hardware vendors to allow free software drivers for their products (either by releasing the complete specs so others can write the driver, or releasing their own driver as free software).

This pressure from customers needs to be chronic (as opposed to acute) so that vendors cannot ignore the fact that they can *increase sales* by releasing or allowing free software drivers.

The flip side of that, though, is to ensure that we make it chronically apparent that they can *reduce costs* by releasing or allowing free software drivers.

The efforts of Greg KH, and many other kernel developers, in making it clear they consider non-free drivers in Linux to be a breach of their copyright (and thus a legally costly exercise), are an essential means of achieving the latter.

It's even better that Greg is one of those who makes it *technically* costly for hardware vendors to put non-free software into Linux, thus getting not just the legal department but the engineers to see the cost benefits of free software.

Thanks Greg, for continuing to drive this simple point home, and actively making it difficult to ignore.

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