Should Linux Use Proprietary Drivers?

Richard Gray writes "Should Linux accept proprietary video/graphics drivers from likes of Nvidia and ATI ? The GPL written by FSF says that the license prohibits proprietary drivers. From the article: 'To write open-source graphics drivers without help from Nvidia or ATI is tough. Efforts to reverse-engineer open-source equivalents often are months behind and produce only 'rudimentary' drivers, said Michael Larabel, founder of a high-end Linux hardware site Phoronix ... Torvalds has argued that some proprietary modules should be permissible because they're not derived from the Linux kernel, but were originally designed to work with other operating systems.' The FSF however, sharply disagrees. 'If the kernel were pure GPL in its license terms...you couldn't link proprietary video drivers into it, whether dynamically or statically.' Where do you fall on this issue?"

Yes.

[TheQuantumShift]

And lo, stuff started working correctly, out of the box, with no makefiles involved. And it was good.

Re:Sometimes

[AvantLegion]

RMS eventually founded the FSF because he couldn't get the source code to a broken printer driver. Learn your history or be doomed to repeat it.

Don't even joke like that. I don't think I could handle TWO Stallmans.