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

[George F. Saxby]

On Thursday 20 February 2003 10:30 pm, you wrote:
> 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.,
 Precicely my thoughts, people naturally are cheap, it is only when dealing 
with a certain class of monied people that you find the integrity to be 
customer loyal. (guess how I know)

-- 
Bandiera tuxa trionfera,
Evviva il penguin e la liberta
www.saltmine.org.uk
           
               George F. Saxby
     

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