Re: Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario

From: Denis Vlasenko
Date: Tue Dec 06 2005 - 07:26:41 EST


On Tuesday 06 December 2005 03:18, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 04:18:51AM -0800, William Lee Irwin III wrote:
> > The December 6 event is extraordinarily unlikely. What's vastly more
> > likely is consistent "erosion" over time. First the 3D video drivers,
> > then the wireless network drivers, then the fakeraid drivers, and so on.
>
> I agree about the erosion.
>
> I am convinced that the only way to stop the erosion is to totally stop
> buying hardware that has only binary only drivers (unless you buy it to
> create an open source driver or to reverse engineer the binary only
> driver of course! ;).

I'm afraid there is not enough Linux users in desktop/laptop market
for vendors to notice.

How about refusing binary-only modules instead? I mean, maybe
if Linux will stop being lax about GPL requirements on modules.
--
vda
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