Jono Bacon: Features vs. Freedom
Recently there has been a lot of discussion bubbling up regarding the possibility that Ubuntu will ship proprietary 3D drivers by default for some video cards. My aim here is not to discuss the specifics of that decision, which is still being fleshed out and ratified, but to instead define my views on the bigger picture behind the discussion - features vs. freedom.
I will warn you now people, my views and opinions on this are not exactly simple. While discussing this view with many friends and colleagues, I have been informed in words of single syllables that my position is complex and multi-faceted. I have had largely the same view on this subject since I got into free software, but I have been working to better define it, and here I want to document it. So, hang in there with me. I may give you a cracker at the end if you are still paying attention…
For some years now I have been expecting a show-down between freedom and features. That is, our community would need to make an important decision between freedom and a closed source technology that is deemed important. In this showdown each of us draw a line in the sand, but our lines vary hugely. In the past, the issue was largely moot - few closed source technologies were deemed important by the wider free software community. Today though we have a bling-tastic desktop just over the horizon, but for many of us the transparent-rounded-wobbly-shadowed masterpiece (!) is inaccessible without some closed-source driver wizardry being poured into your computer. The debate here is not really the specifics of closed-source 3D graphics drivers, but whether we are willing to compromise our freedom for closed source drivers that will ultimately get more people using Linux. Are we?
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