Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and bling (Linux.com)

Posted Nov 15, 2006 4:15 UTC (Wed) by josh_stern (guest, #4868) [Link]

[[That said, I strongly disagree with all the people who imply that they know better which video driver choices are in the best interests of other users than those users know for themselves]]

[That's not what people are saying at all. The problem with Ubuntu's actions is that it will have negative repercussions on the whole Free Software ecossystem. A distribution is not a survey; it picks defaults for you. Ubuntu doesn't give you a selection of software to install, for example. And that's fine, because you can override their selections later. If it installs nv by default, you can then install nvidia; if installs the proprietary driver, you're free to replace it with the free driver. The issue being discussed is what choice Ubuntu makes for you, not if you're allowed or not to make a choice.]

Ubuntu is making decisions about how to best support their users based on estimates of what is most desirable overall to those users. Most people who commented negatively on this are not arguing that Ubuntu's estimates are wrong in this regard. Rather they are saying they don't like this criteria. That's because either they think it is bad for the users or they think it is bad for some other group of people (e.g. "the whole Free Software ecosystem"). Maybe you are right to think that I was being too charitable to interpret this criticism as concern for the users...

Posted Nov 15, 2006 6:25 UTC (Wed) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

Ubuntu has made decision after decision not to choose free software when the free software choice would have involved a little more work for Ubuntu. This includes their primary support tool, their forum, their development support tools, and now their driver set.

Yes, often the free software path would involve more work shouldered by Ubuntu, but the dividends for having all these tools customized to meet their needs would pay off over the years easily, and would help other orgniazations who would pay them back by improving the tools again, and so on, one hand washes the other.

Ubuntu as an organization seems at best weakly commited to the Free Software philosophy. Cynic that I am, I believe they are, as an orgnization, purely opportunistic about it, and shortsightedly at that. There's nothing catastrophic about that. Even a shortsighted, opportunistic company who uses free software can benefit themselves and the free software community, but there is something I find difficult to respect about the strong disconnect between what they preach and what they practice.

Posted Nov 15, 2006 14:36 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891) [Link]

"That's not what people are saying at all. The problem with Ubuntu's actions is that it will have negative repercussions on the whole Free Software ecossystem"

While Ubuntu will enable those drivers by default, it will educate the users about dangers of binary drivers, and it will point them to hardware with free drivers. So it's not THAT bad.

What we have here is a question that should a system be designed for gurus or regural users. It's the gurus and Linux-enthusiasts who care deeply for free drivers. The regural users just want a system that Just Works out of the box. Currently, Ubuntu (or Linux for that matter) does not work for them, since it requires tinkering (like installing drivers for the vid-card). They are faced with a choice of using Windows that has everything up & running out of the box, or they have the choice of using Linux, which requires them to tinker.

The enthusiasts don't mind that tinkering. If they want 3D, they wont have any problems installing the drivers. If they want free drivers, they don't have to do anything. They have it easy. But those regural users? They might want to play a game or two. They would like to have that Compiz eye-candy. But they can't, unless they tinker. So the burden of tinkering has been placed on the people who are the LEAST ready to do it. And that's far from ideal.

This new scheme would simply mean that the burden of tinkering would be placed on the people who don't mind the tinkering, while the regural users (who just want to use the computer with minimium of fuzz) don't have to worry about installing drivers. Don't want binary-drivers? Then don't use them. But why do you want to force regural users to go through the trouble of installing drivers, just because you don't want to use those drivers?

Will this harm free software? Hardly. Right now, many people choose to stick with Windows since it seems to them that they need to tinker with Linux, if they want to use it. THAT harms Linux. If we can move those people over to Linux, it will benefit free software. In short: which harms free software the most:

a) people keep on using Windows
b) people move to Linux, with few bits and pieces of closed software

How would scenario A be better than scenario B? And even in scenarion B, the people who want 100% free Linux, could still have it.