Re: OT: Software Freedom

[Jan Kratochvil]

Hi,

On Sat, 30 Jul 2005 06:24:13 +0900, Anders Breindahl wrote:
...
> I however strongly disagree that this helplessness should be taken as an 
> argument to lay off our good principles.
...
> Once a free driver exists, the hardware may be used in free world. But the
> method is flawed, as the freedom of the development process is severely
> damaged. That does not alter the results, though.

Sorry, I do not understand it much. You refuse binary driver for already
closed-info hardware. Still you use/bought the hardware so you provided profit
for the vendor supporting the vendor's closed approach. Just the re-coded
driver is worse than the binary one so the Free OS sucks more than the
proprietary OS. And you even stole the time of the Free OS developer to do this
braindamaged re-coding with no technical reasons just preventing him to code
meaningful Free code.

So you appear to be a proprietary agent turning down any Free movements.  :-)


> All-in-all, I consider AMS's viewpoint of keeping principles and 
> reimplementing in spite of ineffectiveness to be -- believe it or not -- more 
> pragmatic than emulation of proprietary software.

"believe it or not"? Get the Facts.

The real reason is to provide enough obstacles for Free OS depending on
closed-info hardware. I still keeps the people trying to drop that hardware and
move for some Free-info hardware. It may work but it is just expensive
psychological workaround how to force weak people to behave the right/Free way.


I was suggesting to try providing some generic layer between HURD and BSD but
it may even bring better results to insert such layer later when another OS
adaptation (such as Linux kernel API) gets implemented. It is secondary issue
if some ABI adaptation gets also developed afterwards (despite GPL it would be
IMO legal as the ABI interface would connect to generic enough layer there).


Regards,
Lace