Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on February 22, 2007 12:04 AM
The culture of the project's core group has become steadily more unhealthy, more inward-looking, more insistent on narrow "free software" ideological purity,
Right. There is a very pragmatic argument for not including binary drivers or software: you can't support it. If it is buggy, and breaks, you rely on a third party vendor (often with low interest in Linux) to fix it.
and more disconnected from the technical and evangelical challenges that must be met to make Linux a world-changing success that liberates a majority of computer users.
Actually, Fedora is arguably one of the distributions that makes most technical advantages. E.g., it made SELinux, encrypted disks, and numerous other things usable for the average user.
I don't really buy the "64-bit window opportunity" argument that ESR uses to push the use of proprietary software. It doesn't take much looking to see that the real window of opportunity is the web, and Red Hat/Fedora clearly invests a lot there, e.g. with their investments in open-source Java technology.
When the web becomes the application, companies and users don't need powerhouses as their desktop. Low-power and low-cost hardware will be a lot more in demand (why would you want to buy expensive computers to run a web browser?). With cheap "web terminals" the marginal cost of Windows or other proprietary systems will become to high, giving a lot of room for competition to Linux and BSD.
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Posted by: Anonymous Coward on February 22, 2007 12:04 AMRight. There is a very pragmatic argument for not including binary drivers or software: you can't support it. If it is buggy, and breaks, you rely on a third party vendor (often with low interest in Linux) to fix it.
and more disconnected from the technical and evangelical challenges that must be met to make Linux a world-changing success that liberates a majority of computer users.
Actually, Fedora is arguably one of the distributions that makes most technical advantages. E.g., it made SELinux, encrypted disks, and numerous other things usable for the average user.
I don't really buy the "64-bit window opportunity" argument that ESR uses to push the use of proprietary software. It doesn't take much looking to see that the real window of opportunity is the web, and Red Hat/Fedora clearly invests a lot there, e.g. with their investments in open-source Java technology.
When the web becomes the application, companies and users don't need powerhouses as their desktop. Low-power and low-cost hardware will be a lot more in demand (why would you want to buy expensive computers to run a web browser?). With cheap "web terminals" the marginal cost of Windows or other proprietary systems will become to high, giving a lot of room for competition to Linux and BSD.
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