Resisting the binary blob [LWN.net]

Resisting the binary blob

Posted Nov 17, 2006 7:38 UTC (Fri) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)
In reply to: Resisting the binary blob by emkey
Parent article: Resisting the binary blob

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

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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.