proprietary drivers and secretive hardware [was: Supporting Ubuntu growth]

[Tristan Van Berkom]

Chris Thompson wrote:
> Now, now, ladies and gentlemen.
> 
> Comments suggesting we should hope that Microsoft goes bankrupt, or that
> this is war (meaning, I assume FOSS vs. proprietary software) simply don't
> belong here.

    Well let me publicly apologize for using offensive words like "war" and
terms such as "ruthless organizations", from what I gather; people on this
list are engaged in an active effort to free users of proprietary software,
secret encrypted formats such as msword etc. (the recent thread about ubuntu
in schools really left me impressed with this little community btw),
primarily by offering a software suite that can safely replace all that.

So I am sorry if I came across harshly, my point was only to say that if
we want things to change (like if we want to provide a system that will
"game" just like windows does, or if we want to start seeing gnu/linux systems
running in highscools), we have to make an active effort to change things
and not leave it up to fate.

Questions we should be asking ourselves include:
  - What can we do to make vendors _want_ to have good/fast support
    on gnu/linux systems (how can we make it attractive ?)
  - What exactly is fundamentally wrong about releasing hardware that
    your not allowed to know how to use ?
    should it be against the law for the same kind of reason that you cant
    include an OS and a file browser coupled in the same software package ?

Now, if I'm not mistaken and nobody has any brilliant ideas on the topic,
this thread will just die... just putting a hopefully usefull, positive and
productive spin on this topic.

Cheers,
                    -Tristan