[Gllug] Binary Only Modules are a cheap trick (was webcams onlinux)

[Mike Brodbelt]

On Thu, 2003-02-20 at 10:16, George Saxby wrote:
> Ah, but would you pay a slightly higher price to cover the research involved?

Actually, yes - I think so. If I could go into a shop, and get a piece
of hardware of the shelf, and be guaranteed that there was a fully open
source driver that supported that hardware (and ideally the shop would
print some useful information - chipset, driver, kernel option etc),
then I'd happily pay a reasonable markup. I have bought more expensive
hardware in the past on the basis that the company was Linux friendly,
and actively supported development, so I think I'd be OK with paying for
someone else to have gone to the trouble to find out which hardware was
and was not compatible. I would not bother shopping at our theoretical
store if they provided stuff like the Conexant ADSL card mentioned
though - they would have to provide open source hardware (or at least
clearly label any hardware requiring binary only drivers).

If, however, I was the proprietor of such a ship, I'd be very aware that
it would be trivial for people to wander into the shop, make notes of
hardware models, and then buy from dabs or some other place that could
undercut a small shop. So while I would make the effort myself, I'm not
sure the business model is sound. It basically relies on people to have
the integrity to realise that the research time has to be paid for, and
that such a shop could only continue to exist if the customers were
prepared to back it up with cash.

Mike.


-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug