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    SubjectRe: UDI and Free Software
    On Tue, 6 Oct 1998, Richard Stallman wrote:

    > What I find frightening about this whole argument is that so far the only
    > person who has even mentioned a technical viewpoint is Alan Cox.. Why is
    > this ?
    >
    > This is very gratifying news. I can't be sure of other people's
    > motives, of course, but maybe some of them share my view that freedom
    > is important for its own sake, and that we should not lose sight of the
    > main goal for technical subgoals such as speed.

    Speed is only a subgoal to working.

    > right now I'm
    > tired of telling people "sorry Linux doesn't support that" I'd rather say
    > "yea it works but it's gonna be slower then the competition"
    >
    > If Linux the free kernel cannot handle a certain piece of hardware on
    > its own, if it needs the help of a non-free driver, what does that mean?
    > It means that *as far as free software is concerned*, we don't support
    > that hardware.
    >
    > So we should tell people, "That hardware is not supported--so buy some
    > other model!"

    If only the whole world thought this way but welcome to real life.

    I give out advice on what to buy according to how it performs with Linux
    simply because Linux shows the difference between good and bad hardware, so
    in essence that is exactly what I do. But what of people who already
    have computers an run windows on them? The vast majority of people I know
    don't care one bit about who makes the drivers or whether source is
    provided or not, they ask one simple question "will my computer work
    with Linux?" I lot of the time I don't like the answer I am forced to
    give them.

    When I jumped on the Linux bandwagon it wasn't over phillosphical issues,
    windows wasn't doing the job thanks to some script kiddies who discided I
    shouldn't have a working computer, I changed over and my computer worked
    much better - no other reason.

    Free source drivers will almost always outperform binary only drivers, so
    what's the deal? UDI is an attack on MS, first we win the war then we
    can dictate terms.

    If someone converted to Linux, buys a new machine I'm sure they will prefer
    drivers that are open simply because they will perform better. Right now
    most of those new machines are for windows, UDI (if feasible) could allow
    us to do more to change that.

    Gerhard


    --
    Gerhard Mack
    irc-admin skyline.starchat.net

    gmack@imag.net
    InnerFIRE@starchat.net

    As a computer I find your faith in technology amusing.




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