What modems work with Ubuntu?

[Lee Revell]

On Tue, 2006-02-07 at 13:34 -0400, Derek Broughton wrote:
> Lee Revell wrote:
> 
> > I guess that's your choice.  Most people I know would fire a project
> > manager if they instructed them to spec out systems for a Linux app and
> > they came back to me with something that required a binary only driver.
> 
> Most people wouldn't know the difference between an OSS and a binary-only
> driver, so most "people you know" is a pretty small subset.

Yes, I'm referring to the server space not the desktop.  And those
people had damn well better know the difference.

> > 
> > Most of the companies that ship binary only drivers don't even do it for
> > IP reasons, it's either to conceal patent infringement or hide the
> > crappiness of their code.  If you have something to hide I'm not
> > touching your hardware with a 10 foot pole.
> 
> That's libelous.  "Never ascribe to malice what can reasonably be explained
> by ignorance".  Most companies that ship binary-only drivers do so because
> they still live in the mentality that says "this is _our_ product, we must
> protect it".  They don't need to be hiding any faults - they just believe
> in hiding.

I'm sure each company has different reasons.  Either way educating these
vendors is the solution - Intel and VIA and Cisco and IBM and tons of
other companies are doing just fine shipping open drivers.

> > 
> > For desktop stuff, whatever, but for a mission critical server, no way.
> > Why would I trust my company to some vendor that doesn't even understand
> > that open source makes a more stable system?
> 
> Millions of companies do.  Most of them don't even suffer for it.  Banking
> systems have been relying on closed source software for decades.  

This was more true in the old Windows and commercial Unix server world.
Since Linux won the server wars in the mid to late 1990s, the Linux
server market demands open source drivers.

Lee