On 12/11/2007, Brian Gupta <brian.gupta at gmail.com> wrote: > I am completely in favor of the stance in the constitution that > requires community software releases to be wholly opensource.
That only applies to software we produce. We don't "produce" binary drivers :) Shipping something and producing it is two different things to me. > I also feel that the driver argument is a non-starter, as "generic" > open source drivers can be substituted for the majority of video > cards. Also there is nothing that says that the reference has to run > on every bit of hardware out there. Actually, it is a starter. There are certain bits of functionality that simply will likely not ever be available without closed bits. For example, Intel's wireless drivers require a blob at last check for wireless to work, likewise, Intel also requires a blob for certain video functionality. The list goes on. > One other thing, I don't feel that the OpenSolaris reference should > contain binaries that aren't built by the community, nor contain > blackbox functionality. I can't agree. Our focus should be on our users; not philosophies. As long as we have full redistribution rights and there is no equal open source alternative to a particular binary, then it should be allowed. > If there are other components that need closed source bits, we should > exclude them from the reference. e.g. Sparc disassembler is currently > closed, it should be excluded from the reference specification. The SPARC disassembler will be replaced soon, but you really have no choice to not shop it if you want proper SPARC support until that time. -- Shawn Walker, Software and Systems Analyst http://binarycrusader.blogspot.com/ "We don't have enough parallel universes to allow all uses of all junction types--in the absence of quantum computing the combinatorics are not in our favor..." --Larry Wall
