ubuwalker31 maybe surprised but I support his “Two New Software Freedoms” idea. After I posted Use nv, not nvidia drivers -> Save the headache, he accused me not allowing him “…to have the freedom to install proprietary software on my Linux system” at two separate sites:
Edit: Pierre removed the comment after I commented on his site and apologized. I greatly respect Pierre for taking a stance on this issue though. It is much needed in the open source community now.
That is far from the truth. I was merely ranting my frustration I was having with the nvidia drivers on my Gigabyte GeForce 7300GT graphics card on my desktop. Sometimes they work, sometimes they do not. AND yes, the nvidia drivers are working fine now at my preferred resolution but I WILL revert back to nv for stability reasons. That is my preference, it is my FREEDOM.
ubuwalker31 states that we should have:
- The Freedom to run any hardware, for any purpose
- The Freedom to run proprietary software, to run any hardware
I agree with him 100 percent. I want the FREEDOM to use propriety media codecs and drivers on my BSD/Linux system if I want to. Granted, the usage of propriety drivers and codecs should abide by the intellectual property and media laws of the country a person resides in, ie libdvdcss in the US. I just agree to the licenses and install them so I can watch and listen to Windows media files or watch dvds.
On my Thinkpad T60, I use the ATI propriety drivers which do, on occassion, break during updates. I can revert back to an older driver or just use vesa. It depends what I am doing at the time. If I am at a coffeeshop working on a presentation, I rather use vesa until I can get the time to figure out what the actual problem is (Debian Lenny is a godsend in this respect, it configured xorg.conf for me and I had not had any problems since using Lenny).
So to reiterate, I support ubuwalker31’s two new software freedoms and so should you!
Comments are welcome 🙂
Yes we should have the freedom to use proprietary software but we should avoid doing so because using proprietary software gives someone else the ability to take away our freedoms.