OT: nVidia driver [was: Wish list]

Sean seanlkml at sympatico.ca
Wed Jun 8 20:23:41 UTC 2005


On Wed, June 8, 2005 4:01 pm, Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org> said:

> About 5 years ago, I sure wish the entire, multi-_billion_ dollar
> CAM and EDA markets would have just switched their codebases to
> Win32/DX once-and-for-all, and gotten away from POSIX/GLX
> because nVidia shouldn't have even offered a proprietary GLX
> solution for Linux.
>
> No offense Sean, but I think it's pretty annoying to listen to people
> who don't realize that without a proprietary GLX driver on Linux,
> a lot of CAM and EDA vendors wouldn't have ported to Linux from Irix,
> Solaris, etc... and would have just taken the time and effort to port
> to Win32/DX _never_ to return to POSIX/GLX.

There are clearly cases where the benefit of using a proprietary solution
outweigh the risks involved.  However, there are _way_ too many people
making excuses for abandoning open source.   Many of whom seem motivated
by brand loyalty without any concern for system integrity or overall
viability of open source alternatives.  These bloody zealots for nVidia
are every bit as much engaged in religion (or not) as the supporters of
open source software (ie. both are just supporting what they believe in).

Anyway, my comments were not about abolishing personal choice or in
denying the existence of _exceptional_ cases, rather as a counterbalance
to the unthinking there-is-no-cost-at-all-in-using-binary-modules
mentality.  That applies both in terms of system integrity and the social
implications.

Sean.





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