June 26th, 2008 by Ivan
"NVIDIA’s fully featured Linux graphics driver is provided as binary-only because it contains intellectual property NVIDIA wishes to protect, both in hardware and in software"
NVIDIA Statement
“The NVidia driver is the single component in a KDE4 / Free Operating system stack causing us most of the hard-to-solve problems. In other words, nvidia.ko has grave technical shortcomings.”
Sebastian Kügler, KDE Developer.
“The great advantage of the Open Source development model is that it is driven by considerations of technical excellence, so if you give people enough information, they’ll not only assist you writing the driver, they’ll even help you design it.”
“[...] binary drivers totally negate the shared support and maintenance burden which is what makes Open Source so compelling. Additionally, there is also a drag effect these binary drivers have on the rest of the ecosystem: for instance, Fedora was under enormous pressure not to release Fedora 9 until there was a solution that allowed it to run with the Nvidia binary driver (Fedora chose to ship with a pre-release of the X windows system which Nvidia refused to support and because the driver was binary Fedora couldn’t simply fix the problems and ship anyway).”
James Bottomley. Linux Foundation Technical Advisory Board Chair and SCSI Maintainer. Linux Graphics Essay.
June 23rd, 2008 by Ivan
“Critically though, I think the BBC can, and should, do more to support the Free and Open Source community”
Ashley Highfield, Director, BBC Future Media & Technology
June 6th, 2008 by Ivan
"Honestly, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that the entertainment industry is an existential threat to the idea of free speech, open tools, and an open communications network."
Cory Doctorow. Science fiction writer, blogger, activist. [Link]
June 4th, 2008 by Ivan
"We have shifted towards Linux because of Microsoft," … "Microsoft has a lot of power and it is going to be difficult, but we will be working hard to develop the Linux market."
Gianpiero Morbello, Vice president of marketing and brand, Acer.
[Link]
January 15th, 2008 by Ivan
Most major web based developments of any scale these days work on the presumption that interoperablity, open standards, and platform neutrality are givens. It is not clear why the BBC design brief did not specify these requirements or if it did what technical problems – given the expertise available – hinder them being implemented.
So long as the iPlayer is bundled in with Windows/Internet Explorer it continues to run the risk of breaching state aid rules – as the benefits it thereby bestows on Microsoft (with their somewhat blemished reputation for fair competition) come via the deployment of the public’s licence money.
John Pugh MP, in a letter to Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC