Should Linux Use Proprietary Drivers? 704
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?"
Come on (Score:5, Insightful)
As for this statement:
Firstly that is a very arrogant approach, some of the best developers in the world work on open source stuff, saying it is to hard is just stupid. As for customers not asking for open-source drivers, all I can say is huh? There have been dozens of calls over the years for drivers to be open sourced!
Regardless so long as the drivers are proprietary, I will continue to load proprietary drivers into my kernel, the FSF has a fairly narrow minded view here, yes it would be great if the drivers were open, but they aren't, and I am not going to restrict my system capablities just because the FSF doesn't approve.
Why not? (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is: Should we buy hardware with closed source drivers.
Tom
Sometimes (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong way around (Score:3, Insightful)
Proprietary drivers should never have been allowed to link to the linux kernel - doing so makes them a derivitive (yes, even those drivers that predate the linux kernel). Allowing them to link has diluted efforts to create free drivers, diluted the GPL's effectiveness (in the kernel) and allowed Nvidia & ATI to appear to be contributing more then they actually are.
I'm lucky (hah!) enogh to be using a driver from a vendor [sourceforge.net] who shows a little more support for OSS, but while the software is quite stable, the actual hardware is crap (and utterly useless for games).
Download them (Score:3, Insightful)
As others have pointed out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Any move by the FSF to prohibit this will only drive people away from Linux, since it's not likely that NVidia and ATI will ever open their drivers completely. Free Software is great for some things, but occasionally the FSF has to recognize that some proprietary elements are unavoidable.
Re:Come on (Score:5, Insightful)
And they ship millions of units per year. So while every few years a few thousand people may clamor for them to change thier business models and practices (which is expensive to thier eyes), millions more happily use thier products without a problem.
What do you think thier course of action would be here? They could lose every Linux customer they have, and it would probably not adversely affect thier bottom line too much.
Open (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh goody (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sometimes (Score:3, Insightful)
That's not to say the opensource driver people can't develop a great driver given the necessary documentation, just that sometimes proprietary drivers aren't all bad. And as someone else mentioned, we may as well have the freedom to choose both--Just don't cry to the kernel developers when a proprietary driver breaks something.
Who cares? The kernel license has an exemption. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sometimes (Score:5, Insightful)
There you have it. If Linux systems ever want to develop greater market penetration and actually challenge the dominance of Windows, they need to to be able to handle all the same things, including video. I say, use the proprietary drivers until approrpiate ones can be reverse engineered, then dump them for the open source versions. If more and more people begin to use Linux systems, eventually the graphics systems manufacturers are going to have to cave to market forces and support the open source system.
Re:Well, since it's a proprietary card... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not true. I want OEMs to write the drivers because they have the specs in front of them. Networking drivers have shown many times that releasing the spec to OS programmers often results in better drivers than the OEMs. There's no reason to assume the same can't happen with video drivers.
TWW
Re:Come on (Score:1, Insightful)
I would think that both NVidia and ATI are smart enough to know that releasing their product's source code cost would cost them about $0. This is more of a control issue for them. The higher ups probably think that their IT guys are putting elven magic in those drivers that, if released to the public, would give their competitors some sort of edge. Its just a fear thing really.
So then why not open them? (Score:1, Insightful)
Personally, I just don't understand why NVidia et al insist on keeping their code closed. Sure, there might be some niftly little performance enhancing tweak that they don't want their competitor to have. OTOH, their competitor probably has some nice tweaks of their own. All in all, I think that argument is a wash. I don't think the argument for keeping the drivers closed is pragmatic or ideological - I think it's merely due to inertia. That's what they've always done, and they don't have any reason to change. If they were forced to change - because Linux didn't accept their modules anymore, say - I'm sure they would, rather than lose sales. And it really wouldn't hurt them in the slightest. I'd guess that in the long run it would even help them, because the code sharing amongst all the manufacturers would accelerate the development of new abilities that would drive people to want to upgrade their hardware. Plus think of all the third party development that would drive up demand.
NVidia and ATI are hardware companies, not software companies. If they would just realize that and act accordingly, it would be a win for everyone.
Re:Come on (Score:3, Insightful)
It's hard in the sense that the specifications of the underlying hardware are not available, and have to be inferred from its observed behavior to "reverse engineer" the driver.
I am not going to restrict my system capablities just because the FSF doesn't approve.
That's not the point here. FSF doesn't care whose drivers you use, or whether everything on your system is open source. What is important is the ability to package and deliver an OS that works out of the box, without proprietary encumbrances and without requiring users (especially the less technically adept ones) to fish around for drivers before they can boot their systems.
Re:Come on (Score:5, Insightful)
Previously, they used other arguments: [ffii.org]
Re:Wrong way around (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, nobody, not AMD, not Intel, NOBODY would want to repeat the s/360 debacle. Domintaing an industry for decades, tens of billions in sales. Really. Who wants that?
This is dumb. (Score:1, Insightful)
Here lies the problem: Linux is shit without hardware. People arent going to want to use it "widely" without having to open a box at wal-mart to check the revision number of a peice of hardware to see if some barely-working craptastic peiced together, workaround, hacked, repackaged, 2 year old driver is going to work. Poorly.
The people that make computers useable are: Software developers, and hardware developers. If those 2 entities can't agree then useability goes out the window. Don't get me wrong, I love linux. But at the same time, the 500 bucks I just spent on a new video card and sound card are out the fucking window if I run anything but windows XP. I'm not waiting for some guy, or some group of guys (girls) to accidentally find some way to make my hardware "work" and by that, they usually mean it works electronically, but there is no real software to change any settings or use any advanced features. When the day comes that I don't have to act like a racoon going through the trash in my old hardware bin trying to find a video card (with more than 32 megs of vram) or a soundcard (with a signal to noise ratio of more than 60db, and better fidelity than a ghetto blaster) then I would be more than happy...scratch that, extatic to install Linux and get away from microsoft. GPL really needs to learn to swing a little bit from "idealist" to "realist"
Useability = hardware+software. Hardware limitations are useability limitations. Stop protecting your ideals and think about the end user for a change.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
My view (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Come on (Score:4, Insightful)
Futhermore, nvidia could choose to release docs for their cards which are no longer "state of the art" which would allow the community to take over maintainance and not give away "secrets" to their competitors (once the cards are out for 6 months or so, there are no "secrets" anymore that would harm their ability to compete.)
To continue to withhold docs for older cards / hardware is POINTLESS and hurtful.
Re:Come on (Score:2, Insightful)
Have you just considered for two minutes that it's not the implementation that is complex, but the reverse engineering. Reverse Engineering is pretty much trial-and-error. It's guesswork... Imagine the OSS developer could get hold on the full specifications, then I'd imagine that the "level of complexity" would go down seriously. Actually, as far as I know, NVidia gives the specs of the 2D features of their cards (don't quote me on this, I might be wrong), resulting in strong Open Source drivers for that aspect of the card. Pretty much every NVidia card I have owned worked fine with the Open Source "nv" driver as long as you stay in 2D world.
Re:Open Graphics Project (Score:4, Insightful)
I hate IP issues as much as the next slashdotter but I really can't see this taking off.
LinuxBIOS has taken off in a TINY way because it allows large Linux-dependent companies to boot their machines faster for a tiny piece of free code that they can stick on a £5 flash chip themselves with a £100 device.
OpenCores and the like haven't because the designs are fantastic but to actually put them into hardware in any bulk way costs an awful lot of money.
OGP is basically a large OpenCore project that relies on being able to manufacture cards that are built with some VERY expensive components, for a final price which may be way more than any average graphics card on the market but yet can't outperform that average card. And there's no way to reduce that cost even if you were to assemble it yourself (in fact, it would probably cost more).
And then you have, say, 10,000 units of these cards that you sell at just over cost (literally, because any more and people would laugh at the price tag). The profit you would make would be nowhere near enough to justify the effort, to secure the next batch or to convince some investor to plant millions into the scheme.
And in the end you get a few thousand people who are happy running an open system that costs them much, much more in terms of time, effort and money than **any** card on the market.
It's not going to change the world and it's REALLY NOT going to be available anytime soon in any shop (even the ones who stock every obscure component known to man etc.) for anyone to even notice it exists. By the time it gets there, it's going to be obsolete. By the time the new, improved model is released, it will also be obsolete.
Then you have legal problems like what if nVidia decides it hold a patent on something (hardware patents are much easier to enforce than software)? What if the cards explode in someone's machine? The disclaimers are all well and good but the slightest bad press will kill the entire project stone dead.
And in the end a graphics card is just a graphics card. Those that need the fancy 3D are gamers (who don't care about binaries) or 3D professionals (who wouldn't touch stuff like OGP with no warranties, no performance advantage, etc.).
Re:The kernel should offer API's, no more and no l (Score:3, Insightful)
The standard Linux kernel API (syscalls, etc.) presumably isn't sufficient to write a high-performance video driver. That's why they're writing kernel modules instead of applications. But kernel modules by their nature are loaded into the same memory space as the kernel itself and muck around with its internals quite a bit; they no longer communicate purely over well-known stable APIs.
Re:Come on (Score:5, Insightful)
There IS a cost for companies to release closed source code to the open source world, it's significant, and in terms of support it can be ongoing (and if they put thier foot down and refuse to support modified code then they look bad to thier customers who don't know any better).
Re:If you're going to be picky, hardware's not ope (Score:5, Insightful)
I just want to know how to talk to it properly so I can make it do what it is supposed to do (and push it to its full potential).
My microsoft optical mouse might have code in a little embedded processor inside it (I dont know) but regardless of how it works, what matters is that it talks over USB and it talks using a known documented protocol (so any operating system is able to use it).
My Intel Pentium IV 3.4GHz HT CPU does contain microcode that I dont have any source code for. But, it doesnt matter since the documentation of how to talk to it (the x86 instruction set) is open. (I dont know if the physical specs of how to talk to it and how to build a motherboard for it are open though)
Its the same with graphics cards. We dont want or need the origonal design files for the custom ASICs used on the cards. Or the complete schematics for the cards. All we need is details of how to talk to the card and how to get it to draw stuff on the screen. (which these days means full hardware accellerated 3D being powered by OpenGL) If a manufacturer can provide a graphics card where the hardware interface is open and which supports all the things you need these days for games like Doom III, Unreal Tournament and Neverwinter Nights (like pixel and vertex shaders), I for one am prepared to put my money where my mouth is and support them.
nVidia exec is retarded (Score:1, Insightful)
Gimme a break! It's just brazen bullshit.
The nVidia exec saying that "writing video drivers is very difficult" is the most brazen weaselly crap I've ever heard. He's basically telling the FLOSS community, "Oh, you don't want this code, you couldn't handle it anyway."
The free/open source world has already produced several of the best operating systems, the best C compiler, the best web server, the best desktop environments, the best MP3 encoder, the best instant messenger clients, the best web browsers, the best email apps, the best typesetting software, and the best drivers for all manner of hardware. Linux supported x64 before Windows, runs on more and weirder architectures, and has better SMP support. So don't tell me FLOSS can't do hardware drivers, that's just FUD.
Why the hell couldn't the open source world produce awesome 3D video drivers too, if they could get the specs? What a stupid smokescreen argument against releasing the code.
Desktop linux if failing because of OSS drivers (Score:1, Insightful)
What they need is a Linux Driver Model (LDM) and open up a nice clean binary interface for drivers. Then every small Taiwanese webcam or USB device manufacturer can release a proper driver for this OS actually giving desktop linux a real chance.
ATI and nVidia are in a tight race. I'm sure they continously disassemble eachothers driver to check the latest optimizations. Not giving up the source gives can give the edge for a few months more and thats what matters here. Just like many other hardware vendors in this scene the sofware is becoming a more and more important part to competing. Demanding opensource drivers for everyting will continu to cripple linux and make it an inferior desktop OS (and even hinder the server-OS adoption) to the end of time. WAKE UP PEOPLE. GET OF DOWN FROM THE IVORY TOWER! FIX THE DRIVER MODEL!
Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions (Score:5, Insightful)
A: No.
A little more seriously, let me just repost part of a comment that really illustrates the veracity of this answer:
(seen on slashdot, not said by me)
Re:Come on (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Come on (Score:4, Insightful)
GPUs are predominately massive FPGAs with a highly specialized IO ring (at least they were when I was in the field). The driver essentially loads the array when the card boots. Opening that portion of the driver opend your design to the competitor. Similar things in some chipsets.
I personally would be happy with a well supported binary driver over a half assed open one.
-nB
Re:Why not? (Score:3, Insightful)
But binary blobs, and their open source equivalents (drivers written under NDA), are common in Linux. While OpenBSD is free and fights for hardware docs, the Linux crowd just sits on the sideline doing nothing.
Re:nVidia exec is retarded (Score:2, Insightful)
no...not really.
Firefox is better than Opera? Once again, I disagree.
Gaim is better than Trillian? Not on my windows desktop.
You're basing fact on your opinion. Stop it.
Re:Not in my kernel (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Come on (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, in many cases there is technology or code that is licensed and *can't* be released as open source because the people that own it don't want it released.
Finally, even if the developers want to do open source, their management may not (yet) be on board with open source.
Given time and good experiences, I think most hardware vendors will provide open source drivers. We just need to encourage them to do this rather than beating them over the head with it!
Re:Well, since it's a proprietary card... (Score:1, Insightful)
But when you throw in all the different programmability options (vertex shaders, pixel shaders, etc) modern GPUs support, it becomes an entirely different beast. We're talking about a piece of hardware whose capabilities are so complex people have devoted efforts towards using it for things OTHER than it's purpose, such as folding and even physics.
I'm sorry, but writing drivers for modern high-end 3D graphics hardware is NOTHING like writing drivers for a NIC, or even 2D graphics drivers.
Re:Screw the FSF (Score:3, Insightful)
Just to pick one obvious example: if someone's running a proprietary video driver, and their network driver is crashing, it's proven in practice to be extremely difficult to distinguish between a subtle bug in the network driver and a bug in the video driver scribbling over memory in the network stack.
Without visibility into the source code for everything running in kernel-space, issues like that turn out to be extremely labor-intensive to fix and diagnose. We don't have that kind of labor available. And of course if the issue's in the proprietary driver, the kernel developers can't fix it anyway.
A pragmatism that ignores consequences isn't much of a pragmatism.
Jumping out a window might be a "pragmatic" way to leave a building, but most people would agree the pragmatic solution would be to take the elevator to the lobby and use the front door instead.
GPL over the users (Score:5, Insightful)
not allowing proprietary drivers is a mistake (Score:2, Insightful)
Stallman says that the 0th law of free computing is that I own my computer. And he's right. I *do* own my computer, and I own my video card as well. If using a proprietary driver is the only way to use my video card on my computer, then who are the Linux community to tell me I can't? Or to even make it harder for me?
The fact is that Linux's hostility to third-party drivers -- even open ones -- is a huge detriment to the operating system.
Linux should take a lesson from Solaris and establish a standard interface which allows anybody to write a driver, open or not, and have it be binary-compatible with the operating system. Under Solaris, it was possible to create a single binary driver and have it run unchanged under Solaris 7, 8, 9, and 10. My understanding is that Linux deliberately cripples binary driver compatibility just to make it harder for anybody to ship pre-compiled drivers. That's the behavior I'd expect from a cell phone company, not an open operating system.
Also, for the record, I've written video drivers for ATI cards for a living (Solaris). They're insanely complicated; with literally thousands of registers. Reverse-engineering would never reveal the full complexity of the hardware.
As for documentation, the documentation I've worked with (from more than just one video chip vendor) is almost always woefully incomplete. It doesn't work to "just release it"; it really does involve a lot of cleanup or phone support with the people trying to develop software. Remember that the documentation is written by and for people who can just get up and walk down the hall if they have a question. Once you start supporting third-party developers, it can be a nightmare.
Re:Come on (Score:5, Insightful)
A huge chunk of it is drivers. Frequently you will see new driver releases that massively improve performance in certain games without diminishing visual quality. That's all "proprietary" software R&D that no sane company is going to publish for their competitiors. And then you have "professional" cards where literally the only difference is drivers certification.
Anyway, there's a giant difference in video drivers and (say) ethernet drivers in terms of the importance of driver R&D.
Re:Come on (Score:3, Insightful)
There have been several times that things have worked with OSS drivers that dont work with the proprietary ones. For example, try running NVidias proprietary drivers on a system with a Xen kernel. If you manage to get them to build and load at all, after hitting the big powerbutton on your now dead machine, try running the opensource drivers.
Proprietary drivers are often much worse than their OSS equivalents, and graphics drivers arent that much of an exception. Access to documentation being equal, I'd bet you the OSS version would be more stable every time.
But hey, I'm sure the proprietary driver would be much better 'optimized' for Quake and 3dmark.
Re:Sometimes (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Come on (Score:1, Insightful)
politics and tree-hugging aside - how exactly would "the opensource community benefit" from this ?
especially if you can elaborate on "HUGELY" part
I also think the chip makers would benefit from it in terms of code improvements and fresh ideas....
minor bugfixes - maybe
code improvements - rather unlikely
fresh ideas - for what ? for drivers that contour the hardware ?
you are flaming, dude. by the very definition of the word
The FSF is full of it (Score:2, Insightful)
The only thing that the GPL can control is derived works. If the work isn't derived, it isn't under any sort of GPL control.
Now, creating a module that can link statically or dynamically without it being derived IS a tricky thing. But it can be done.
If the interface is well documented, the code creation trail is legally clear, and ideally it works unmodified on at least one non-GPL code base, the module cannot be derived from GPL code and the GPL doesn't apply. At all.
I'm not sure ATI or nVidia's modules qualify but they are close.
Actually distributing a static linked binary containing GPL code would probably be a GPL violation. (Note that nVidia's binary doesn't contain GPL code, and "magic numbers" from header files are not copyright, any more than the same sort of information taken from Windows headers taint WINE.)
Distributing a non-GPL-derived dynamic linked binary, or a binary with end-user compiled glue code would not be a GPL violation. The end-user just happens to dynamically link it to GPL code, or compile it with GPL code, but that is his right under the GPL and not the distributor's problem.
I am not a lawyer, etc, etc.
Pushing the rope (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Come on (Score:1, Insightful)
The typical consumer won't care in the slightest. They won't even know, because they don't want to know (or more accurately they want to not know). Unless, that is, someone makes a big deal of it and spreads FUD.
nVidia have already written their drivers, and will likely continue to do so. Your average consumer - a windows user - will use their included binaries. Open-sourcing the drivers should only affect those who are trying to do something unusual - something that nVidia probably wouldn't bother with normally.
It would probably even save them money. As it is, they are investing in writing linux drivers themselves. If they instead opened up the hardware specs for others to write the drivers - they could even just release the same documentation they gave their own driver writers - they'd save that effort and money. (Of course, those wanting to USE the drivers would have to wait for the community to write them, but I wasn't looking at it from the community's point of view.)
Well .. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well.. has he get the driver code yet ?
Re:Sometimes (Score:1, Insightful)
Let's assume that there's a bug in the proprietary driver. Are you seriously saying, that "buggy but mostly works" is worse than "doesn't work at all, until I finish writing a driver, and even then will have a whole host of different bugs, until the code reaches a similar level of maturity?" I suspect you are because "FOSS has faster development time," and "More eyes make all bugs shallow, " and "FOSS generates higher quality code."
Even assuming that all those statements are true, RMS's stituation is different from the situation you're advocating in one very important respect.
RMS had a mostly working driver, and therefore could use his printer.
If you deny others the use of proprietary drivers, then you are condeming them to having nonfunctioning hardware, and therefore you are subjugating others, for your beliefs, to a situation that St. IGNUcius himself didn't even face.
He didn't have to put up with a completely non-working printer. He always had access to a printer that mostly worked. He only had to put up with a non-working driver when he was actively testing his own driver. In the meantime, he could use the existing driver. You're saying users don't get any driver, until the open source driver is complete.
It's a different situation all the way. You either didn't remember all the relevant facts to the historical situation, or you're wilfully misrepresenting the historical situation in order to create pandering remark.
RMS/FSF failed, still no driver (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
History doesn't change facts, it helps explain them. In this case the fact is RMS is still *not* getting the driver, I guess that makes the FSF a failure.
In any case, useability is still the champ.
Re:GPL over the users (Score:2, Insightful)
No proprietary drivers (Score:3, Insightful)
There are many advantages to Open Source software, and to me, being fully in control of your computer is one of them. But when I used the NVidia driver I was not in control. When it was first announced I was in the process of building a new PC. On the basis of NVidia officially supporting FreeBSD, I decided on a GeForce card to show my reciprocal support. For a few months I was happy. Then the proprietary nature of the driver rose up and bit me. When a new FreeBSD CD set arrived on my doorstep via my subscription, I wasn't able to use it until NVidia updated their driver.
The last straw came when after SIX MONTHS of no updates, I went searching around for reasons. It turned out that NVidia had decided not to update the driver because they were tired of tracking an evolving kernel. They weren't going to release a new Binary Blob(tm) until the 5.x branch was declared stable. While that might make sense on the surface, how come none of the Open Source XFree86/X.org drivers had the same issue? How come none of the Open Source DRI drivers in FreeBSD had the same issue? This was especially painful because the driver KEPT CRASHING the kernel! In twenty five years of using Unix, BSD and Linux, this has been the only time I have seen a kernel crash.
I went to the store and bought a low end Radeon. I am using the Open Source radeon driver, and couldn't be happier. It has never crashed on me, and I never have to wait for someone to get around to syncing it up with an OS upgrade. The transition from FreeBSD 5.x to 6.0 was painless, which is how it should be.
Keep the Binary Blobs(tm) out of my operating system!
Re:GPL over the users (Score:3, Insightful)
If we gain (the use of functionality of a graphics card) by accepting a binary, we lose incentive to develop the code. Short term gain in the functionality of the machine, long term loss. If you really don't get this, I'm not sure how to make it make sense, accept perhaps as an analogy. Binaries are like welfare payments that let a person buy food enough to survive, but aren't improving their chances of getting a job. Sharing code (or at least documentation) is like sending someone to college rather than giving them welfare. You eat in both circumstances, but only the latter case is actually leading anywhere. If all you care about is getting food (or finishing that term paper on time, or getting the quarterly report done) then it doesn't matter.
Users won't be to use their hardware to the full capacity because you want the manufacturers to develop driver according to your rules.
No. Not even close. Please try again. Consider this: I don't want manufacturers to be developing drivers at all for Linux. Rather I would like to see the information made available so that anyone who so chooses, and who is capable, can develop drivers. Whether the hardware is able to be used to its full capacity depends on how good those drivers are. Note the similarity to the analogy: if given the choice between welfare or a job, I'll take the job.
Being force to use Windows and being subject to Microsoft abusive monopolistic practices because your job requires a functioning computer and Linux takes too much time and effort to get it to work.
No. Not even close. Also offtopic. Still, for fun, you are saying that you will be forced to use Windows? Solaris & OS X & BSD don't exist? And this is because Linux is "to hard to get to work"? Are we still talking about drivers? Linux certainly appears to be as easy to install, and once installed updates are easier and software installation is easier. Not as easy, easier. Where else can you pick from a list and have 1000s of applications suddenly downloaded and runable? This is easier than driving to walmart.
GPL is the only reason Linux is on map and not another BeOS or OS/2. Fine, I concede that, but, the open-source community should not look to cut out proprietary vendors.
Two excellent products that were better and it just didn't matter. However, the open-source community doesn't want to cut out proprietary vendors. Rather, they want to cooperate with them. It is the Free Software community who thinks that locking code up today will result in a tomorrow, eventually, where everything is locked up. Thus, the insistence on behavior that will avoid this loss of freedom. You might not have all the functionality of your graphics card this decade, as part of a struggle to make sure you have access to a codebase of Free software forever.
Good useul software is sometimes closed. Leave it to the end user to decide if that is a problem.
Sure, no problem. Just don't link it staticly or dynamicly with GPLed software. It isn't a problem unless you want to have your cake and eat it too. Then it *is* a problem. I'll even admit I own a fairly current license for Mathematica for Linux(,though it isn't installed.) However, I used Octave when I was paid to do research and could choose my own tools. This makes sense to me.
DRM is fact of life and entities have a legitimate copyright to protect their right. It is a fundamental foundation of our societ