X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules [LWN.net]

X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

Posted Aug 17, 2006 19:12 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190)
Parent article: X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

I wonder if those who do would be so keen to defend the right of vendors to release binary drivers, or insist that the Linux / X11 / Fedora developers should cater to their needs, if they placed a price tag - say $50 - on those drivers? Let's face it, nothing's stopping them; it could happen tomorrow, it wouldn't be at all immoral, and as the binary driver advocates never cease to point out, the Linux user base is far too small for such a move to have an adverse effect on the company concerned.

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X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

Posted Aug 17, 2006 21:29 UTC (Thu) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (1 responses)

If they could get the $50 without commercial repercussions, they would be obliged to charge it. Otherwise they would be subject to shareholder lawsuits for failing to extract potential revenue. (Apple was forced to charge for OS upgrades, for that reason.) But I'm not sure what your point is.

X.org, distributors, and proprietary modules

Posted Aug 17, 2006 22:38 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

If Nvidia would sell me a license to full specifications for their
hardware for 50 dollars, I would be willing to buy that! If Nvidia was
willing to sell me the source to a Free Software driver codebase for
their hardware for 50 dollars, I would buy that!