Date: Sun, 3 Mar 2002 22:28:12 -0500 From: Brian T.Schellenberger <bts@babbleon.org> To: Kenneth Wayne Culver <culverk@wam.umd.edu> Cc: "Justin L. Boss" <jlboss@yahoo.com>, "freebsd-questions@freebsd.org" <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: NVIDIA 3D FreeBSD Drivers Message-ID: <20020304032812.D6305BA05@i8k.babbleon.org> In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.21.0203032150410.29179-100000@rac3.wam.umd.edu> References: <Pine.GSO.4.21.0203032150410.29179-100000@rac3.wam.umd.edu>
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On Sunday 03 March 2002 09:53 pm, Kenneth Wayne Culver wrote:
> > I don't think I'm missing your point, I just disagree with it.
> >
> > Instead of fighting for FreeBSD I'd rather fight for open source
> > software, and the nvidia Linux "solution" is to include Linux in their
> > closed-source world. You want them to include FreeBSD in their
> > closed-source world as well.
> >
> > This seems more like betrayal to the cause than fighting for the cause to
> > me, and I, for one, am not going to fight for that.
> >
> > A petition for them to release their information so that FreeBSD *and*
> > other O/S's could take advantage of their hardware--*that*, I would
> > support.
> >
> > But not this.
>
> So let me get this straight... You would rather wait for something that is
> never going to happen than see usable 3d drivers come out for
> FreeBSD. This is unrealistic. Nvidia is legally unable to release source
> for their drivers, and I think we should be happy that they want to
> support FreeBSD at all. There is no legal or moral obligation for them to
> release specs for their cards or open-source drivers. The fact that they
> are releasing drivers at all is enough for me (and most other people that
> actually want to USE the 3d support that they paid for.)
True.
And I'm under no legal or moral obligation to buy their products as long as
they insist on sticking with proprietary solutions.
I still find this "legal obligation" not to release them to be so much
gobbly-gook: They *chose* to use solutions that were so encumbered, and I
*choose* to avoid them as a result.
I'd be happy to encourage them to pursue other strategies. I don't want to
join some movement to beg the corporacracy to drop some scraps in our bowl,
too. I'm not going to prostitute myself that way.
I do all my prostitution on company time instead :-)
[I really don't think of myself as being nearly as much of an open-source
radical as I seem to be coming across in this little debate, but I guess I
wish that we could have enough pride in what FreeBSD has accomplished as a
freeware project that we wouldn't let the attractiveness of a slightly
smoother curve on the blast from the frag granade have us all begging to be
treated just like the "big boys" of the O/S's.]
[[Really, I never I knew I felt this strongly about it before . . . ]]
--
Brian T. Schellenberger . . . . . . . bts@wnt.sas.com (work)
Brian, the man from Babble-On . . . . bts@babbleon.org (personal)
ME --> http://www.babbleon.org
http://www.eff.org <-- GOOD GUYS --> http://www.programming-freedom.org
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