On 7/24/07, Sam Varshavchik <mrsam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Lonni J Friedman writes: > Which is the point that I made the last time this came up a few weeks > ago. OSS doesn't mean that the support is any better than closed > support. The two gentlemen who seem to be the most vocally against > 'binary blob drivers' have no record that I can find in this list's > archives of ever providing anyone with actual fixes for drivers. Nor How many problems do you see posted here about the free drivers, for which a fix is needed?
A fair share.
All I see here is an endless stream of complaints about Nvidia's and ATI's non-free drivers. Problems with the other free drivers are a rarity. What does that tell you?
Nothing, because you're only seeing what you want to see. This entire discussion is a waste of my time because you're remembering the facts that are convenient, forgetting what doesn't jive with your view oft he world, and inventing the remainder to suit your argument.
For my part -- since you seem to demand to see my credentials -- over the years I have logged of a handful of bugs in Bugzilla, concerning various bits and pieces regarding various video hardware, across an assortment Fedora beta releases, over many years. And, many of them eventually were resolved satisfactory. So I can confidently say that I've done my part -- as little as it might actually matter in the great scheme of things -- towards improving the state of free video drivers for Linux.
Its great that you're filing bugs, but that doesn't prove anything about open drivers being superior.
Furthermore, since I do have one laptop with an Nvidia chipset, the other day I did reconfigure X to load up Noveau, looked around, and left a few thoughts in X.org's Bugzilla. I'll try my best to provide useful feedback to Noveau's developers, and assist as much as I can. And if I do find myself with more free time than I do now, some hacking around is not entirely out of the question. As little as I can do, I will do when it comes to free video drivers. But there's nothing that I can do when it comes to the non-free drivers.
No, you chose to do nothing because it aligns with your viewpoints. And that's fine, however attacking & mocking others because they are using a 'binary blob driver' is both infantile & short sighted.
> that "the community" can help is little more than talk, as I've rarely > seen any evidence that more than a very small number of people are > able to actually fix bugs in any one driver anywhere. It's not the raw number of people that can actually fix the code that matters. If you think that's the only metric that counts, you have a grave misunderstanding of the free software community.
And yours is one through rose colored glasses where everyone gets into a circle, holding hands, and singing the praises of the almighty Stallman. I'll say it again very clearly, and with smaller words so that you'll hopefully be able to follow: Open source drivers do not have support that is any better than closed source. For someone who claims to be a proponent of open source, you have an unbelievably closed mind.
