Resisting the binary blob [LWN.net]

Resisting the binary blob

Posted Nov 15, 2006 8:14 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Resisting the binary blob by emkey
Parent article: Resisting the binary blob

It has to gain significant market share first.

Market share is irrelevant if you don't have control. Lotus 1-2-3 and Wordperfect had "market share" in 1990. Microsoft had control. By the 1995 Lotus 1-2-3 and Worperfect become irrelevant. They are still around, but... who really cares about them ? Today it's about MS Office and OpenOffice.org, not about former gigants...

Don't talk to me about fundamental freedoms when the fundamental freedom I care most about is my right to choose something other than a Microsoft product in twenty years time.

The only way to make this fredoom reality is to reject binary blobs today. Sorry. Either you are talking about "something other than a Microsoft in twenty years time" or you are talking about "working system, right here, right now". There are no middle ground. Why ? It's easy. Microsoft's most famous strategy is embrace, extend, extinguish. Do you really think Microsoft will hesistate to apply the strategy it perfected for the last 30 years to kill "something other than a Microsoft product" ? Binary blobs are just begging for this strategy to be applied. Turn blind eye first (that's what the Microsoft is doing), then wait while the same technology is used in Linux and in Windows drivers - and finally ask vendors of few key drivers to "remove their IP" (to make drivers inferior to their Windows ones) - poof no more alternative. Purrfect.

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Resisting the binary blob

Posted Nov 15, 2006 14:57 UTC (Wed) by pbardet (guest, #22762) [Link]

MS had control because the had Windows and they could break any API easily to fail other software for unknown reasons...
I just hope Linux will prove it's better without using those tactics. That's why I'm opposed to any MS contributions to the Linux world as they're currently trying through Novell.

I don't see why because one distribution uses a binary blob, development will stop on the free version for all other distributions, especially the hard code open-source ones. You can't compare commercial and open-source software development.

The only reason people don't want binary drivers, is because they fear it will actually win in the end. It's up to the open-source programmers to prove them wrong. But it's so much easier to try to prevent things from happening than creating.

Resisting the binary blob

Posted Nov 15, 2006 15:25 UTC (Wed) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

I don't see why because one distribution uses a binary blob, development will stop on the free version for all other distributions, especially the hard code open-source ones.

On the other hand, just because one distribution doesn't include binary blobs doesn't mean that development will stop on all the not-so-free distributions. I don't see that you have made any compelling arguments why FC should include them, other than you seem want them.

In your original post you mentioned that FC is one of the more popular distributions, and then go on to assume that they would be even more popular if they were to include binary blobs. Could it be that they would become less popular if they included them?

Resisting the binary blob

Posted Nov 16, 2006 18:50 UTC (Thu) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link]

The only way to make this freedom reality is to reject binary blobs today.

And you base this assumption on what exactly? Idealism goes nowhere in the real world. I don't like that, but it's a reality. Open Source software has done well to date because there is a good and compelling business case for it. At this point the perception is that this isn't true on the desktop. Linux needs to make significant inroads on the desktop for that to change. And lack of driver support is a significant impediment to having that happen. The good news? Binary drivers exist that solve most of the problems. The bad news? There is no bad news, though some people seem obsessed with pretending there is.

Resisting the binary blob

Posted Nov 17, 2006 7:38 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

Binary drivers exist that solve most of the problems.

I wish that was true. Unfortunately it is not. Binary drivers just add more problems to an already fragile desktop market:

they are brittle, and cannot be repaired easily,
they don't admit self-maintenance,
you cannot benefit from others in the community solving the problems (e.g. sending patches to lkml),
in practice they stop some of these people from working on free alternatives, just as BitKeeper prevented use of free tools,
when the vendor gets tired of supporting your hardware you are stuck with a buggy solution, just as in the Windows or Mac OS X world,
efforts cannot be pooled: vendors cannot reuse the code for their own drivers, so the wheel is reinvented for each one,
you cannot get help on lkml because your kernel is tainted,
and finally, their legal status is not clear so distributing them could open distros to being sued by their own developers, not by obscure submarine patent outfits.

It would also appear that this is bad news indeed. And that free drivers are a pretty practical proposition, not an idealist dream. Get real, man! :D

Resisting the binary blob

Posted Nov 30, 2006 19:38 UTC (Thu) by emkey (guest, #144) [Link]

Binary drivers do not in and of themselves prevent free drivers. Ergo, they cause no problems in that arena. Which pretty much makes every point you raised moot.

Again, there is no issue here. None. What we have is a very obscure and largely pointless pseudo religious objection by some people.

Resisting the binary blob

Posted Dec 1, 2006 3:01 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

If the binary drivers are installed by default, instead of the free drivers, then every single one of man_ls's points is valid. Binary drivers prevent free drivers when the user doesn't know that the free driver exists.

Resisting the binary blob

Posted Nov 17, 2006 23:03 UTC (Fri) by roelofs (subscriber, #2599) [Link]

Idealism goes nowhere in the real world. ... The bad news? There is no bad news, though some people seem obsessed with pretending there is.

And you call khim idealistic? Whoa, my irony-meter just exploded...

You want a compelling business case? I made the business case for my last job. It went something like this: open source gives you control (binary blobs don't, period); it tends to give you security (binary blobs are much murkier in this regard); and it tends to give you reliability (binary blobs tend not to). It's also cheap, but that was merely fourth or fifth on the list. Those are the features that businesses care about.

As for the desktop: personally, I really don't care if there's a business case for it, compelling or otherwise. The business cases for FLOSS servers showed up long after open source itself did, and large market share is relevant only if it advances the FLOSS cause. A large market share that's 95% composed of binary-blob users is utterly useless as a tool to convince device makers to open their specifications, so who needs it? More power to Fedora and Red Hat, says I.

Greg