[Nottingham] "tivoization", iPhone, and GPLv3 lockout?

[Martin]

Michael Erskine wrote:
> 2008/9/4 Martin <martin at ml1.co.uk>:
>> The open source community is at present completely reliant on
>> *proprietary hardware* ...
> 
>> All it takes is for some proprietary firmware dongling to be imposed on
>> the hardware and we then have nothing to run our beautiful software on...
> 
> Don't buy it: use the billions of devices already out there that run
> the free software just fine.

That's fine for the moment...

However, remember the days of hardware incompatibility for Linux where
everyone needed to be a nerdie geek and all night just to achieve a
successful (or partially successful) boot up?

We also must work around various bits of proprietary pollution. Perhaps
the most pervasive example is that all networks must use an MTU=1500 if
there is anything Microsoft on there.

There's various examples from the continuing web server and web browser
wars.

Further, some "web configured" hardware devices require the use of one
specific browser on one specific OS to be able to configure them, or
they just don't work. What's easier, swap OSes for that task or go back
to the shop to swap the device?


And yet another slightly sad note:

####
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.0_Notes

 Font size and physical DPI

Previous releases of Mandriva Linux have attempted to set the correct
DPI (dots per inch) value for your system's monitor. ... This system is
intended to ensure that a '10 point' sized character is rendered with
the exact same physical size on any monitor.

While a laudable goal, this system has never worked without problems.
... problems often occur on websites, which are often designed with
specific sizes in pixels in mind and do not consider the issues
associated with the goal of resolution independence. Briefly, the
computing world as most people experience it is not designed to
accommodate the ideal of resolution independence.

With Mandriva Linux 2009 we have therefore decided to succumb to the
convention of most other operating systems and distributions and set the
same DPI value for all monitors, regardless of what the correct value
should be. ... This will result in characters of the same point size
appearing physically larger or smaller depending on the actual physical
size and resolution of your monitor, as many users are accustomed to in
Microsoft Windows and Apple OS X, and as many applications and web sites
are designed to expect. ...
####


"Lowest common denominator" anyone? "Chicken-and-Egg" also?

Cheers,
Martin

-- 
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Martin Lomas
martin at ml1.co.uk
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