Re: [aclug-L] Free software and warez

[Nate Bargmann <ka0rny@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Excellent piece John, enjoyed reading it.

What follows is my opinion and may not even be coherent.

<Opinion>
I think there can be little doubt among the informed that Free Software
is the new paradigm.  Commercial wares will be with us for a while and I
see office apps and games as having the longest lifespan, particularly
with regard to Linux.  What I see as a threat to Free Software and Linux
is the proliferation of hardware requiring a non-disclosure agreement
(NDA) between a driver author and the manufacturer.

NDAs keep Free Software from supporting the latest PC hardware in a
timely fashion.  This gives the Free Software community a bad rap of
being perceived of not being up to the challenge of supporting the
latest hardware.  Already one of the major distributions, S.u.S.E. has
taken an approach to supporting certain video cards with an agreement
with those manufacturers that the X server source will be released Freed
after some abitrary interval.  I think S.u.S.E. should be commended for
taking this approach and also for assisting the XFree86 Project, Inc.

Now, back to the topic at hand, whether "cracking" proprietary software
written for Linux is ethical or not.  What do we do if some company or
group agrees to supply binaries to the Linux commuity for a fee as a
result of an NDA?  Should the community support it?  I say if the user
receives a benefit of being able to use the hardware, then ethically
speaking the fee should be paid (this is a poor example as I don't know
of any situation where this now exists).  It seems to me that if the NDA
has some expiration date after which the manufacturer agrees to release
the specs, then "cracking" this software, or any proprietary software,
only gives the Linux community a bad reputation of being software
pirates, FUD that is already common enough.

The best resolution to this problem is convincing hardware manufacturers
that writing drivers is a burden to them and that freely available specs
will boost their market share.  It's a tough sell,     but we're used to
the tough sell.  Another solution might be binary modules (drivers) for
the Linux kernel be supplied with the hardware.  However, I assume the
kernel is highly dependent on the modules being of the same version and
compiled with the same libraries as it.  This creates the problem of
version skew and I don't see hardware manufacturers willing to go down
this road either.  Perhaps version 2.2 or later will present a generic
driver API that would allow a module to be used with any kernel in that
major.minor series.

NDAs present a vexing problem which I believe can be solved only when
maufacturers see they are losing market share to those not using NDAs.
This will require some hardware manufacturers to step forward and
actively support Linux.  It is up to us to support those that support
Linux.
</Opinion>

- Nate >>

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