On 26/02/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Michael T. Richter</b> <<a href="mailto:ttmrichter@gmail.com">ttmrichter@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<div><span class="gmail_quote"></span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div><span class="q">
On Mon, 2007-26-02 at 09:04 -0600, Tommy Trussell wrote:
</span><blockquote type="CITE"><span class="q">
<pre><font color="#000000">Surely more manufacturers and vendors will start advertising linux</font>
<font color="#000000">compatibility... as this thread points out it will be a real draw in</font>
<font color="#000000">some circles. A few vendors such as <a href="http://newegg.com" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">newegg.com</a> already include linux</font>
<font color="#000000">in their keywords, and their customer reviews often include comments</font>
<font color="#000000">about compatibility. So there's hope!</font>
</pre></span>
</blockquote>
<br>
They will not. The problem is one which is fundamentally at cross-purposes to the F/OSS movement's philosophy -- particularly the "software wants to be free" segment of it.<br>
<br>
Hardware is a strongly-competitive industry full of trade secrets. (One of the trade secrets most jealously protected is just how <b>bad</b> most hardware is under the covers....) The algorithms used, for example, in video cards, audio cards and printers tend to be extremely secretive, especially the algorithms used to give
</div></blockquote><div><br><snip> <br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div>everywhere -- by embedding a proprietary blob in a free wrapper. This is not a good solution in the long run either because a) the whining of militant F/OSS types gets very annoying and likely causes some potential Linux supporters to not bother and b) it's a lot of extra work for a fringe market again.
<br>
<br>
So what kinds of solutions would there be?<br>
<br>
Well, first, we can keep Linux as a hobbyist fringe. (This is a solution that many of the more militant wings of the F/OSS movement seem to approve of most.) Second, we can lighten up a little and stop hassling the people taking the blob approach -- use persuasion to move the blob out into the open instead of whining and threats. Third, we can make a stable ABI to Linux and stick to it, thus allowing people who maybe aren't quite ready to open their source the chance to expand our market for us. Then, again, we can use gentle persuasion to move them from pure-proprietary to blob-proprietary to openness. Unfortunately the latter two approaches require patience and tolerance, something the militant wings -- the Stallmanists, if you will -- are not noted for having.
<br>
</div></blockquote></div><br>I'm partial to a stable ABI to Linux.<br><br>One of the great successes of Macintosh (and Windows) is that you can often still run ANCIENT apps on current operating systems. For all the touting of "you will always be able to recompile version xyz of your app for a new operating system" advantage for Linux, it's not really anything special. It's definitely not something that's unheard of in the Mac world (or, for that matter, the evil Windows world ;-P). My father still uses an app from 1992 daily (there's never been a decent replacement for it) and I have colleagues who constantly use Windows apps copyright 1992 and 1994 on Win XP and Win 2K.
<br><br>It would be a significant improvement if vendors could only have to worry about updating their code once a year rather than every 8 weeks when a new kernel or library comes out (yes, it's good for development, but it's bad for stability).
<br>