Rahul Sundaram wrote: > Ed Greshko wrote: >> Frank Cox wrote: >>> On Sun, 28 Oct 2007 21:29:09 -0500 >>> Les Mikesell <lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>> >>>> Except that the people providing the binary do have a reason to care >>>> if it works. >>> Until they decide that it's time to sell you another card and >>> discontinue their >>> binary blob for the model that you already have. >> >> You mean like when a developer of an opensource project decides he >> doesn't >> want or can't continue to support the project and it closes down for >> lack of >> others picking up the mantle? > > The difference is that, there is a opportunity for others to get > involved which is not the case for non-free software. Most popular Free > software projects frequently are supported by multiple groups even > commercially and when one goes away, another steps up to fill in the gap > as it has happened quite often and there is also the possibility that > you hire others or get in-house people to maintain it. non-free software > does give that level of control to end users. That is a "difference" but one has to understand that first, the nvidia drivers are free...just not open and second, there is a corporation behind the nvidia drivers and it is certainly possible that the corporation values its reputation. In both commercial and opensource software there are no guarantees that a particular piece of software will be supported or continue to be developed. > This is apart from the legal issues involved in combining non-free > modules and the Linux kernel for a distribution. I must have missed that part of the discussion. I didn't notice it was part of the discussion that nvidia drivers or ATI drivers be made part of a distro.
