Whats with the petty Open Source Pureness that has killed PWCX

Williams Jr, Ernest L. ernesto at ornl.gov
Sun Aug 29 12:21:31 UTC 2004




-----Original Message-----
From: fedora-test-list-bounces at redhat.com on behalf of Aaron Gaudio
Sent: Sun 8/29/2004 5:23 AM
To: For testers of Fedora Core development releases
Subject: Re: Whats with the petty Open Source Pureness that has killed PWCX
 
On Sat, 2004-08-28 at 22:00 -0400, seth vidal wrote:
> > FWIW, it would mean (at least) one less fedora devel guinea pig.
> 
> The biggest problem with the nvidia drivers is that when something
> breaks, and a kernel or X devel person sees that the user is using the
> nvidia drivers, then they're stuck. They can't go look through code and
> find the problem. They come up to the binary-only nvidia driver and have
> to stop.
> 
> That's a whole world of no-fun.
> 
> And the sad reality is, lots of people use these drivers and almost all
> of them post about bugs in X or at the kernel level with these drivers
> loaded.

Yeah, I can understand the frustration at this. I agree that if
someone's having a problem with an binary-only driver, their only
recourse is the provider of that driver.

================================================================
Of course, but the frustration should be directed torward the vendor/maintainer of the binary-only driver.  There will always be binary- only. Vendors want to make a lot of money and protect their secrets.  This is known as competition.  For example, if NVIDIA wants to keep selling me their hardware they had better keep producing a good binary-only driver.  I think it would be better if NVIDIA open-sourced everything but don't hold your breath.  
Well as long as I can play unreal tournament I am happy.

Bottom-line: maintaining a binary-only driver may not so easy when the kernel evolves.  The PWCX maintainer should just deal with it and not "throw in the towel"



Thanks,
Ernesto




-- 
Aaron Gaudio <prothonotar at tarnation.dyndns.org>


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