Rubén mainly selects certain Ubuntu packages and customizes them (configures
them) to work with free software systems. Don't mistake this for being a
worthless effort though. It's an extremely time consuming effort. However it
is nothing compared to reverse engineering hardware in order to produce a
driver. That is not a task this community is readily capable of (on any scale
at least). It is not something anybody would want to invest money in. It is
almost always a waste of resources compared to what can be achieved if a
company supported a driver writing effort (provides specs or the code). The
simpler solution that does work is educating users about where to get free
software friendly hardware and why they should care (particularly where they
are not using a free software distribution... yet!). Non-free software is an
ethical problem as well as a technical one. It causes all sorts of issues on
distributions which include non-free software.
Examples:
Ubuntu: Adobe Flash is no longer supported; Adobe discontinued support for
Firefox (security updates only)
Ubuntu: Oracle discontinued licensing for Oracle Java; what everybody has
tested against (major issue for those dependent on it). Canonical had to pull
support for Java because they could no longer package and release it. They
also could not leave the software installed as it was a security risk for
users. They decided to break users systems instead!!!! Wise move despite that
although it shows the need to remove non-free software from the GNU/Linux
stack.
Lexmark printers: Support/non-support has fluctuated over the years. They
released a non-free driver a few years ago for a version or two of a
particular distribution. Then they discontinued it. Bye-bye printer. Even if
you knew what you were doing and could figure out how to get it to run
(provided all the circumstances were met to satisfy its needs) you'd likely
have spent a few hours to get it working with a newer version of a
“supported” distribution. This is not just Lexmark printers. Samsung did
it, Canon's done it or something similar (only supported GNU/Linux in Japn!
And only for a specific release), and many many more.
Just being supported under “Linux” is not good enough. There are
thousands of examples with thousands of devices and products. These are just
a handful of good examples.
The solution is to direct users at free software compatible hardware and
contribute to free software projects such as Trisquel, Lightspark, and
others. Just getting all the pieces to fit is more important to increasing
the number of users. The masses are use to paying for newer hardware.
Explaining it to a non-technical user is easy once you get the hang of it. I
usually say something like this: There is a good chance your [printer, video
card, wifi adapter, etc] will not work with a new computer [this is when most
non-technical users switch to GNU/Linux]. This is because most manufacturers
don't support discontinued hardware. Those who do generally don't support it
for long and particularly not on newer systems. When something is supported
long term it is usually because of a standard or because the company has made
available the source code. Source code is what makes your printer work. When
anybody can fix, improve upon, and work on this code you don't have to worry
about the device working as you are no longer dependent on the manufacturer
for support. Then point them to libre.thinkpenguin.com since it is simple,
easy, etc to get hardware from us. Should some other company start doing this
you could obviously point them elsewhere. Or should our catalog become
available... point them to a store which sells it. There may also be a
solution where you could point them to a certification logo if the free
software foundation certification program takes off.
