[Savannah-hackers] Re: submission of Waves, Clouds, and Sand - savannah.nongnu.org

[Mathieu Roy]

> I might be reassured if you could tell me what positive steps are being
> taken to get modern, free 3D working on GNU systems.
> 
> Of course I understand the ethical concern, but usually it's more
> effective to have a 2-part plan: avoid proprietary component while
> lobbying for/creating free replacement.

In your case, you do not avoid proprietary components. You simply
propose to create a free software that will require anyone that way to
use it to install proprietary driver.

Can you explain why ATI or Nvidia would release a free driver if using
their proprietary drivers become a norm?

> I don't know what's going on behind the scenes, but at the moment it looks
> to me like 3D isn't a big concern for the FSF.  Maybe I can help motivate
> others to make it a priority.

Do you remember the origin of the GNOME project?
At this time, using Qt, non-free at this time, was easier, faster.

The position of the FSF about this kind of matters is pretty clear and
pretty coherent.

> In my case, I want to work on the "it actually does something" side of
> programming as opposed to the "it enables you to write a program that does
> something" side.

It's abolutely your right. As it's the right to the GNU project to
think that writing a program that does something must use free
programs that enables to write something.

Obviously, if your program "actually does something" only if you
install a proprietary software, it's easy to disable your software.  

The GNU project started by building development tools ; it was a
required step to build other tools as free software.

> > > Having a large number of free 3D programs available which use
> > > modern hardware capabilities seems to be an improvement over the
> > > current situtation of only the proprietary programs being able
> > > to do so;
> >
> > An improvement from the technical point of view, not from the ethical point 
> > of
> > view.
> 
> No, an improvement in BOTH areas.  Right now we have proprietary games
> with proprietary drivers; in the future we will have free games with
> proprietary drivers, then free games with free drivers.  It's the middle
> step.

Your point of view could be qualified as evolutionist. But this theory
is far too simple to be realistic.


> Having people learning from and sharing advanced 3D games is surely
> better than binary-only games with 10-page EULAs.

Maybe. You are maybe right. 

But it's not the position of the GNU project.  And Savannah stick to
the GNU project's position.


> > the end does not justify the means; and I think it is very
> > doubtful what will make proprietary vendors change their narrow
> > minds. We should rather make plans that depend on our own (the
> > free software community) actions.
> 
> Software doesn't exist in a vacuum -- okay, well maybe embedded software
> does ;) -- you always depend on hardware.  So, you can't make plans
> completely independently of what hardware manufacturers do.  Even if you
> think, "I'll always have my Pentium 100", it will eventually stop working.
> 
> The best way to avoid a proprietary future is to convince lots of people
> that your philosophy is correct.  If you can't even run a 3-year-old
> game on your system, it's going to be a hard sell.

You are right, new computers are mainly needed to run games. But
actually, industry/states does not buy software to play games. And
it's seem far more essential to me.

Nobody cares if whether I played to Warcraft III or not, but many
people cares about the fact that some universities ask students to make
only MS Word .doc

> > can install it in my 100% free system because it is part of
> > Debian; it runs, but it works very slow and not very smooth. It
> > could be a Savannah package anyway, but if it was, we would expect
> > its developers to try to resolve our bug reports complaining that
> > it does not work well in our systems, without telling us "go and
> > install the nvidia package from Debian non-free".
> 
> Of course it's easier preaching to the choir than doing missionary work.
> 
> However, it doesn't make sense to expect game developers to make their
> game run better on an incomplete, buggy driver.
> 
> Direct the pressure gradient outward and talk to the hardware
> manufacturers.

There's no pressure. We tried to explain how we understand the GNU
point of view, that we both, Jaime and me, share - and you probably
noticed that we do not have exactly same profile.

Apparently we failed.  

The rules of Savannah will not change today. You didn't prove that
making a political stand is useless (It would be hard). 

> > And how do you intend to pass the word to NVidia that people are
> > using their cards to run tuxracer rather than some proprietary
> > game? All they will see is an increase in their sells, which is
> > what they want, and will think that their policy of keeping
> > technical details hidden is working very well.
> 
> Tux Racer is not exactly a high-visibility project.  You need a popular
> free software project that attracts enough users that "get it", who are
> clamoring for NVidia to release a free driver.
> 
> It worked with TrollTech and QT, and MySQL.

Do you think ?
I was thinking at the contrary that what worked with Qt and MySQL was
the fact that many people refuses to install non-free stuff on their
computer... and so there was more advantages for Qt and MySQL to be
really free.

Same problem: how can you incitate someone to free a software after
accepting it as non-free. You accept as non-free, you build on it: you
depend. You are not in position for any lobbying. You can only ask for
pity. 



-- 
Mathieu Roy
 
 << Profile  << http://savannah.gnu.org/users/yeupou <<
 >> Homepage >> http://yeupou.coleumes.org           >>
 << GPG Key  << http://stock.coleumes.org/gpg        <<