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Free is too expensive (Economist)Free is too expensive (Economist)Posted Apr 8, 2012 7:31 UTC (Sun) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136)In reply to: Free is too expensive (Economist) by khim Parent article: Free is too expensive (Economist)
> does it mean they are “small elite with have power over others”? If other people were actively excluded from joining that group (as is the case when copyright and/or patents and/or lack of source code exclude people who do know how to program from being able to modify the software that they use), then it might. Because if society depends on something that is under the control of an exclusive elite group, they will have political power over the whole society. That's why the core goal of FLOSS has always been to increase the amount of people who have control over the software they use. (And that's also why even non-programmers stand to benefit from FLOSS — with a large and non-exclusive base of developers, non-developer users have more options to turn to when developers/maintainers go against the users' interests.) > Whatever. You may as well declare Law of Gravity as something “inherently wrong” - it'll not care. Just like I don't care about your crazy declarations. What you dismiss as "crazy declarations" are nothing less than the core ideals that the 18th century French and American revolutionaries believed in. > Yes, there are enough failed FOSS projects and I'm sure there will be many more. It's way too soon to say that Plasma Active and Nemo Mobile are "failed". I believe they'll be more successful than the ones you mentioned (OPIE and GPE) ever were — mainly because the hardware they're designed for is itself far more commercially successful than the old so-called "PDA" devices ever were. > CyanogenMod is the only project with clear long-term perspective. It has no more "long-term perspective" than the rest. The only reason it has a larger usage share than the others is from riding on the coattails of it's "evil twin". > If Android will fail at some point (for example if WP15 will kill it) then CyanogenMod, Plasma Active and other simlar projects will have no hardware to run on. If that were true, then it would have been impossible for OPIE and GPE to run on hardware made for Windows CE (Jornada / iPAQ), but they did. And it's not guaranteed that Android being successful will ensure that unlocked hardware will be available in the future — for a while it seemed like there would be no more unlocked Android phones, when the Nexus One was cancelled. > It's either that or nothing at all. If Linux will form the platform which is used by Joe Average then there will be sibling platform for FOSS-lovers. Again, there's no guarantee of that. iOS is descended from FLOSS (Mach and 4.3BSD), and yet it has no "sibling platform for FOSS-lovers". And there's no reason why a (desktop or mobile) OS based on GPLv2-licensed Linux couldn't be just the same — indeed, Android could easily become like that if Google and the device manufacturers chose to stamp out all unlocked hardware. The only real solution is for there to be a large enough niche market of people who actively prefer unlocked hardware, regardless of whether it's desktop or mobile. (And I believe that Google, for the moment at least, understands that there is such demand for unlocked hardware, or else there never would have been the Nexus product line.) That's why it's crucially important to make the case to the public at large about the benefits of user-freedom (and in particular the ways that locked-down hardware restrict it).
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Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 8, 2012 10:11 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] If other people were actively excluded from joining that group (as is the case when copyright and/or patents and/or lack of source code exclude people who do know how to program from being able to modify the software that they use), then it might. What this has to do with discussion in question? What you dismiss as "crazy declarations" are nothing less than the core ideals that the 18th century French and American revolutionaries believed in. Rilly? You must know how to program or you are not human are ideas of French and American revolutionaries? News to me. I've said: This is far cry from the “core ideals that the 18th century French and American revolutionaries”. It's one thing to empower people by giving them access to human knowledge. It's another thing to disqualify people by demanding them to learn things they don't really need or want. It's way too soon to say that Plasma Active and Nemo Mobile are "failed". They failed in the sames sense Linux desktop has failed. They don't come preinstalled (and will not come preinstalled in the future), they don't influence the markets they are in (hardware is designed to support Android 2.x or Android 4.x, never to support Plasma Active or Nemo Mobile), etc. The most they can hope for is something like Zaurus: niche product which will be on market for a few years mostly unnoticed and which will be later replaced with Android (or may be Windows8/9/10). They may survive as “curiosity project” like XMBC but this is side-attraction at best, this is not where future direction of the society is determined. If that were true, then it would have been impossible for OPIE and GPE to run on hardware made for Windows CE (Jornada / iPAQ), but they did. Sorry, but this is wrong. OPIE and GPE only had platform to run because Sharp created Linux-based PDA. And earlier efforts were also driven by companies, not by FOSS community. The same hardware was used for Windows CE devices thus it was an easy port (initially OPIE only supported Zaurus). When Sharp switched to Windows CE itself in 2007 OPIE and GPE lost the momentum, too. It's one thing to circumvent the bootloader and few unique components. It's another thing to port Linux to the hardware which has no public specification and which was never designed with Linux in mind. And it's not guaranteed that Android being successful will ensure that unlocked hardware will be available in the future — for a while it seemed like there would be no more unlocked Android phones, when the Nexus One was cancelled. That's separate issue. But if your hardware is using Linux-friendly components then to have free OS on it you basically only need to circumvent the bootloader. If your hardware is designed for totally different OS from the ground up then it's much, MUCH, MUCH harder. iOS is descended from FLOSS (Mach and 4.3BSD), and yet it has no "sibling platform for FOSS-lovers". iOS is only used by one producer which is quite explicitly is not interesting in filling all the niches. And it you can install Linux (Android) on iPhone - but it works significantly worse then Linux on Android handsets. The only real solution is for there to be a large enough niche market of people who actively prefer unlocked hardware, regardless of whether it's desktop or mobile. Bullshit. It just does not work. This approach was tried many times (Zaurus, OpenMoko, Nokia's Maemo/Meego efforts, etc). This niche market is just too small. It's large enough to support creation of a few devices from the components used by mainstream, but it's not large enough to support it's own separate ecosystem. That's why it's crucially important to make the case to the public at large about the benefits of user-freedom (and in particular the ways that locked-down hardware restrict it). “Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”? That's definition of insanity. This way was tried and it just does not work. Time to move on: accept that public at large is just too ignorant to care about software freedom… and coopt it anyway. Internet community did that beautifully when it was threatened by SOPA/PIPA: general public don't care about copyright all that much (mostly because it's too ignorant about copyright-relevant issues), but it reacts when confronted with the danger of loss of their favorite toy. This means that FOSS long-term survival is guaranteed only if FOSS community will learn to create toys used by general public. If they will be threatened then you you can mobilize millions if not billions in a case of danger. If FOSS will be used only by some FOSS-lovers then the destruction of the whole ecosystem will just not be noticed by general public. FOSS community may be powerful, but it has an Achilles heel: ultimately it needs hardware to run on and said hardware can only be created by large companies. It is just as stupid to pretend that it's not important as it is to stupid to pretend that FOSS is powerless.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 8, 2012 10:54 UTC (Sun) by BlueLightning (subscriber, #38978) [Link]
As someone who was involved in the handhelds.org community for a long time and the current maintainer of Opie (yes, it's still barely alive) I feel that Opie and GPE are being bandied about here as if they have significant relevance to the discussion at hand. There are some parallels, but the situation was entirely different.
It was a few years ago now but after working for some time on handheld Linux I came to the unpleasant realisation that Opie, GPE and the Linux-based operating systems that they ran on where never, ever going to reach the masses. It was never going to happen.
Why not?
Because they never came pre-installed mass-market devices (among many reasons why not, at the time, GPL was a problem for many companies) and getting them onto existing devices was an exceedingly difficult and risky procedure even for the moderately competent - much more difficult than installing Linux on a PC. Unlike PCs, the hardware was almost completely closed and differed for almost every new device, and we couldn't keep up. Not to mention that building an OS for end-users for a mobile device was a gargantuan task for a group with fairly limited resources. The saddest thing of all though is that ultimately the effort was stymied by politics.
However, I wouldn't say the effort was a complete failure. We got a lot of real software development done, and out of the desire to be able to build an operating system grew the OpenEmbedded project, which flourished and has enjoyed commercial success that still continues to this day. Not to mention that developers who worked on various projects around handhelds.org had a lot of fun and learnt a great deal (myself included). This isn't particularly relevant to the desktop Linux discussion at hand, but worth noting.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 8, 2012 11:26 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] As someone who was involved in the handhelds.org community for a long time and the current maintainer of Opie (yes, it's still barely alive) I feel that Opie and GPE are being bandied about here as if they have significant relevance to the discussion at hand. Well, yes, is is. It was a few years ago now but after working for some time on handheld Linux I came to the unpleasant realisation that Opie, GPE and the Linux-based operating systems that they ran on where never, ever going to reach the masses. It was never going to happen. Hmm, that's my point exactly. Because they never came pre-installed mass-market devices (among many reasons why not, at the time, GPL was a problem for many companies) and getting them onto existing devices was an exceedingly difficult and risky procedure even for the moderately competent - much more difficult than installing Linux on a PC. Sure. But here is the problem: as time goes on it becomes harder to install Linux on PC, not easier. Not just things intended to close the ability to install Linux totally (like Secure Boot) - there are other efforts, too. These changes are slow because when they interfere with lives of general public general public pushes back, but the process is quite steady. Should we want till Linux desktop will reach the same stage as OPIE today? Or, perhaps, we need to do something to make sure it'll never happen. Note that even the reason which kept Linux niche open for years (you need some Linux-compatible hardware to develop server solutions) is no longer valid: Virtual PC works fine for that. Unlike PCs, the hardware was almost completely closed and differed for almost every new device, and we couldn't keep up. Well, the history repeats itself with GPU, at least. As Cyberax said: there's that sense of fin-de-siècle in the air - the current situation is unsustainable and Something Has To Happen. Either Linux desktop will finally reach general consumer or it'll die off. And the more I look on the situation the more likely it looks like we'll have both (like it happened on handhelds/mobiles): we'll get some kind of mainstream “Linux desktop”, but it'll be some kind of deep fork which will ignore most of the efforts which happened before it. Current distributions then follow the OPIE/GPE lead on the road to oblivion.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 8, 2012 16:30 UTC (Sun) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link] > as time goes on it becomes harder to install Linux on PC, not easier. Not in my experience. I first tried to install Linux on a PC around 1997 or 1998, and couldn't do it. Since then it's gradually gotten easier; the last few times I've installed Linux (most recent one was this past December or January), I had no trouble whatsoever. > Either Linux desktop will finally reach general consumer or it'll die off. That's pure FUD, nothing more.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 8, 2012 19:40 UTC (Sun) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link] Oh, and: > Well, the history repeats itself with GPU, at least. Not so much; right now there are only three major desktop GPU manufacturers (Intel, AMD, nVidia), all of which have free drivers available for all GPU variants up to almost the newest ones, and the latter two manufacturers also have proprietary drivers for Linux. And for mobile GPUs, proprietary drivers for Linux are readily available, and work is underway on free drivers for one mobile GPU family/manufacturer.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 9, 2012 1:40 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Care to explain how can I use switchable GPUs (ATI and Intel - both officially supported) on my Sony VPCSE?
Right now I have to blacklist radeon driver, or it simply hangs with black screen.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 9, 2012 8:44 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
That's not because they're being evilly kept secret by nasty hardware manufacturers trying to destroy desktop Linux. It's because switchable GPUs is hard enough when they're *not* completely different GPUs with distinct drivers. Even the first case has only been working for a year or so.
(And the people working on these free drivers are funded by... AMD and Intel! Normally, you'll note, competitors.)
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 9, 2012 14:34 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
But that's exactly what khim and me is telling. Good switchable GPUs are a hard task to implement.
So vendors simply don't bother with Linux where it'll be useful only for a fraction of 1% of their users. NVidia hasn't even ported their Optimus technology to Linux in proprietary drivers.
In the area of switchable GPUs all we get is airled. And while he's a mega-super-developer, he can only do so much.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 8, 2012 17:47 UTC (Sun) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link] > Which basically implies that people who don't want to learn how to build Linux systems and care for them should be considered defective and don't deserve lenience. It implies nothing of the sort. > It's one thing to empower people by giving them access to human knowledge. That is what I've been saying all along: if people don't have sufficient knowledge about the technologies they depend on, they are disempowered. And things like locked-down hardware and source-unavailable software have the effect of disempowering people by excluding them from access to this knowledge. Therefore, what you said earlier — locked-down hardware is "good for them!" — can't be true (and is totally contrary to the core ideals of the FSF and the FLOSS community at large). > They failed in the sames sense Linux desktop has failed. The way I see it, the Linux desktop is successful today and getting better all the time — and there's no reason why it has to be used by the majority to be "successful". (There's an old saying: "Unix is user-friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are." It was true then, and it's still true now.) > When Sharp switched to Windows CE itself in 2007 OPIE and GPE lost the momentum, too. Like I already said, the real reason why OPIE and GPE lost momentum was because the whole "PDA" device class was supplanted by smartphones and tablets. > It's one thing to circumvent the bootloader and few unique components. It's another thing to port Linux to the hardware which has no public specification and which was never designed with Linux in mind. The Windows CE devices were never designed with Linux in mind, and yet OPIE and GPE ran on them. And for another example: the BeagleBoard / PandaBoard / RaspberryPi / IGEPv2 class of devices probably would never have existed if it weren't for both:
> This way was tried and it just does not work. It did work — that's why we've got the PandaBoard et al., and the Nexus series, and probably also why the threat posed by EFI was defeated (at least it looks that way currently). > This means that FOSS long-term survival is guaranteed only if FOSS community will learn to create toys used by general public. If they will be threatened then you you can mobilize millions if not billions in a case of danger. The problem is that they won't be threatened (or at least they won't perceive any threat) by the unlocked hardware going out of production or the destruction of the FLOSS ecosystem. If the Nexus and whatever other unlocked Android devices all were discontinued today, the majority of Android users would barely even notice. You said so much yourself: "Of course not! It's good for them! This is what they want!"
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 8, 2012 19:20 UTC (Sun) by rqosa (subscriber, #24136) [Link] Also, one more thing: > > It's one thing to circumvent the bootloader and few unique components. It's another thing to port Linux to the hardware which has no public specification and which was never designed with Linux in mind. What about Rockbox, then? It was quite successful on hardware that was never meant to run it or any other OS/firmware other than the manufacturer's own one, and it only declined because (same as with PDAs) the smartphone/tablet boom has decreased the usage share of DAP devices.
Free is too expensive (Economist) Posted Apr 9, 2012 16:25 UTC (Mon) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] Sorry, but this is wrong. OPIE and GPE only had platform to run because Sharp created Linux-based PDA.Sorry, but this is wrong. DEC^WCompaq Western Research Lab had been working on SA1100 StrongArm prototype hand-helds well before the Zaurus, with Linux.The Compaq iPaq was borne out of the Itsy work and, though it shipped with WinCE, Compaq WRL provided Linux friendly bootloader firmware and distributions, which were pretty easy to install. The only daunting step was running the WRL provided WinCE app to reflash the firmware - still easy though. DEC^WCompaq WRL remained a nexus of the Linux StrongArm handhelds community for a long time after (handhelds.org remained hosted there for years after). The Sharp Zaurus StrongArm Linux devices came after the Compaq iPaq. Also, they were, I think, harder to find. Compaq iPaqs were in a lot of shops at the time.
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