Resisting the binary blob

Resisting the binary blob

Posted Nov 24, 2006 3:28 UTC (Fri) by dkite (guest, #4577)
In reply to: Resisting the binary blob by emkey
Parent article: Resisting the binary blob

Sure, lets make everything work out of the box. Let's make it easy to
install and run on anything.

Explain to me how having binary blobs, or closed proprietary bits of
software can make this happen?

The desktop is almost there. Most of the major components work very well.
Large parts of the desktop infrastructure is nearing the stage where it
can be assigned a 1.0 version number. There will be very large changes in
the coming years to these basic building blocks when improvements are
implemented, the inevitable dead ends are fixed. One illustration is
Ubuntu rewriting the init script system.

The only thing that keeps this whole mess working at all is the fact that
we have code and licenses that allow us to make it work. Remember, Linux
Desktop (tm) is made up of dozens of different projects. The kernel,
printing subsystem, desktop environments, multimedia libraries, graphics
drivers, office software, scripting languages, compilers, etc. How can
closed source blobs work in this environment?

Maybe someone can make things work now. But what about next year when the
progress has given us new versions of almost everything that makes up the
desktop environment?

I speak from experience. I have had to try to maintain a few systems with
different binary drivers. Security updates break the system, and require
rebuilding, hunting down updated drivers from different sources. If the
distro is doing it, all that means is less resources available for
improvements due to the amount of resources required to keep binary trash
working. The more dependance on binaries, the less stable our systems
will become.

And how is that supposed to gain large numbers of users?

Derek

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