The Case for Non-Free Firmware By Default
Ubuntu comes with a nice application called “Hardware Drivers” (a.k.a. jockey-gtk) for installing proprietary drivers for wireless cards and other devices that lack open-source support. This is great, except when your only connection to the Internet is wireless and you have no way to download the driver or firmware you need. Here’s why this situation should change.
The reasoning behind the exclusion of closed-source drivers from the default Ubuntu system centers on legal and philosophical issues. In some cases, Ubuntu’s legal right to redistribute proprietary binaries is in dispute. And most Ubuntu developers consider a dependency on closed-source code as incompatible with the Ubuntu philosophy.
To a degree, I agree. But to paraphrase Albert Camus, even in free-software evangelism, there is an order, there are limits. In other words, staying true to the principles of open-source development shouldn’t come at the cost of basic functionality for the user.
If the developers want to keep closed-source video drivers out of the default stack for philosophical reasons, fine; those are easy enough to install later, and are not essential for getting a basic system up and running. But having no way to get online is a deal breaker, especially for non-geeks who don’t know how to work around the issue.
Broadcom
Ubuntu would work better out-of-the-box for more people if it included non-free firmware and drivers for wireless cards by default. Curiously, the proprietary Broadcom STA driver, which is essential for certain kinds of wireless cards and was included by default in the Jaunty kernel, has been removed in Karmic and is available only as a download from the repositories.
Why this decision was made is unclear, because there were no legal issues involved in distributing the STA driver (if you don’t believe me, read the license available from Broadcom’s site). Presumably a Richard-Stallman fanatic decided it would be better for Ubuntu users to have non-functional wireless cards than to be denied the liberty of using only Free software.
Similarly, the b43 wireless driver, which supports most Broadcom-based wireless devices, requires binary firmware to run. Previously, this was only available via extraction from Windows drivers that Ubuntu did not have the explicit right to redistribute. Hardware Drivers supported the automatic installation of the firmware from the Internet, but Ubuntu did not ship with it because of legal concerns.
Recently, however, open b43 firmware has become available. It doesn’t work very well yet, but having it installed by default might at least help some users get online to download the proprietary firmware.
Better yet, I’d like to see Ubuntu take a stance and ship the closed-source firmware by default until its open equivalent matures. The chances of being sued are minimal, and of being held liable even less so. If open-source developers cowered before every legal threat leveled at them, Linux itself would have disintegrated nineteen years ago.
On the CD
If Ubuntu developers want to avoid non-free wireless drivers in the default system image, the least they could do is include the packages necessary to install them on the live CD. This way, Hardware Drivers would work for users lacking a wired Internet connection.
There might still be legal ambiguities involved in distributing drivers in this way, but the philosophical issues would be mitigated. More importantly, many users would be much happier, pace RMS. And that’s what matters.
I could not agree more. One of the biggest hurdles in having the “average user” install Ubuntu on their own is that A LOT of them have Broadcom wireless cards and have to jump through hoops just to get it working. Something they definitely cannot do unless somewhat tech savvy.
Then again, the STA driver in Karmic causes a hard locking kernel panic on my system every time I try to download anything heavier than simple web browsing. Nobody seems interested in fixing that, though. I look forward to the possibility of this open-source firmware you mentioned.
Its absolutely inappropriate to use Stallman’s name as a pejorative in this article. It’s insulting to Stallman who has absolutely nothing to do with this decision and to the Ubuntu developers with whom you have a disagreement.
Take the time to do the research and find out who when and why a decision is made. A relevant starting point for your research would be this:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kernel-team/2009-May/005734.html
Tim specifically mentions that the restricted module infrastructure is incompatible with the fast boot time targets and the the entire concept of the restricted module manager has to be thrown out and module linking has to be re-engineered another way. The fate of the broadcom driver is specifically brought up in the discussion.
Do you really want to call Tim Gardner a Stallman-esque fanatic? I’m assuming you’ve sign the code of conduct… is this sort of name calling really in the spirit of that document. Shameful and unnecessary sensationalism that does absolutely nothing but raise the temperature of the discussion.
I strongly suggest you go back and edit the article you wrote and remove the unnecessary comment about fanaticism.
-jef
-jef
“If the developers want to keep closed-source video drivers out of the default stack for philosophical reasons, fine; those are easy enough to install later, and are not essential for getting a basic system up and running.”
1. They are not that easy to install. Not for a novice user, and especially not when the idealist crowd has intentionally tried to hide this capability and make it as intimidating as possible. (“These drivers represent a risk to you…”)
2. They *are* sometimes essential for getting the system up and running.
The “philosophical” reasons are silly. Why should we care if we can edit the source code or not? Most users can’t write code anyway.
If I have to choose between using a proprietary driver that works and might theoretically have some security issues, and an open source driver that sucks, doesn’t support all the features of my hardware, and is certain to have major bugs and a few security issues of its own, I’ll take the proprietary driver. Hell, I’ll pay extra for it. We paid for our hardware and we want to use it to the fullest.
And yes, it’s the Stallman-esque fanatics driving this crap.
As a recent convert to Ubuntu I was scratching my head when I upgraded from 9.04 to 9.10 and there was no Broadcom drivers available to get my wifi working on my laptop. Luckily I merely had to reach round the back of my desktop, grab the ethernet lead and plug it into my laptop and then click on ‘hardware drivers’ to get them downloaded. But for loads of new users, those with more difficult access to their routers, or even older machines with no ethernet port, this could present problems.
Now that Jef has brought the boot time issues in front of me I can understand where the decisions are going. But since so much of the market are using Broadcom drivers for wifi, an alternative driver must be written and perfected BEFORE dropping it off the installation cd surely? Wifi is so everyday it must feel uncomfortable to release a product whilst fully knowing you cannot support x amount of the laptops out there with their wifi. Good luck to the programmers working on the ‘open B43 firmware’ or other drivers.
Jef: I’m not sure I buy that excluding the STA driver from the default install was due to concerns over boot time. All they needed to do is include the ‘wl’ module in the kernel by default, and it would have had no bearing on the boot time of systems without the relevant hardware. They could have done that easily without including the linux-restricted-modules package. Minimally, they could have made it available on the CD so it could be obtained without being online first.
MrD:
I’ll turn your comment on your head. What if Canonical’s long term goals isn’t really to maximize the number of new users doing self-installs. What if the business strategy depends heavily on driving sales of Ubuntu pre-installed systems through OEM partners like Dell and getting a cut of that revenue? Missing broadcom drivers aren’t a problem for Ubuntu systems purchased directly from Dell or other OEM vendors are they? Its only the no-cost self-installs that are problematic. One could argue that out-of-the-box proprietary hardware support is a value-add worth paying money for.
-jef
Chris:
No they could not have done that easily… not without risking legal action associated with a GPL violation. I would very strongly encourage you to get familiar with how the lrm stuff works and how it skirts the GPL prohibited act of distributing linked code without corresponding sourcecode. The thread I reference hints at what’s going on in Tim’s discussion on why it impacts boot time. Until you understand how the lrm stuff works you are speaking from ignorance and this isn’t going to be a contructive discussion. I’d encourage you to talk to Tim directly… but since you’ve already painted him a fanatic…I don’t see that discussion going well either.
Then again I sort of hope they take your very naive advice and try rolling in binary blob kernel modules in to the general kernel package. Because the resulting discussion about Canonical violating the GPL would be so much fun to participate in. I can’t imagine a more fun topic.
-jef
Jef:
I’m confused… this discussion that you’re so excited to have about violating the GPL should have already happened, right? Because the Broadcom driver was included on the last Ubuntu release, but not this one… so hasn’t Canonical already violated the GPL, or did something change? And if something hasn’t changed, why isn’t Chris’ suggestion a valid one, if it doesn’t affect boot time?
I don’t claim any knowledge about the boot time stuff, but from that thread you mentioned, Tim said this: “I’m aware of the pain this move will cause, but its likely no worse then the transition to DKMS for nVidia and ATI.” Obviously my experience is completely individual, but it’s certainly a lot more pain for me. I’m sort of ticked that my dern wireless doesn’t work for some undetermined reason either related to a) saving someone else some time (but not me because I have to waste a bunch of time finding the driver myself… which is not exactly trivial b/c I do not have ethernet access either at home or work, only wireless), or b) some GPL violation that they’ve done in the past but have decided they shouldn’t do this time.
It’s funny that you criticize the author for “unnecessary sensationalism that does absolutely nothing but raise the temperature of the discussion,” but then say, “Because the resulting discussion about Canonical violating the GPL would be so much fun to participate in. I can’t imagine a more fun topic.” I’d like to think that there are, in fact, more fun topics to talk about, and thus your statement is sort of a hyperbole for the sake of raising the temperature of the discussion… but I digress.
hsp:
you need to look at how the restricted module manager script
lrm-manager works to build and link kernel modules on the client system. Ubuntu did NOT distribute a usable wl.ko kernel module in Jaunty. Part of the final linking process that creates a usable kernel driver is done on your client system at boot up.
That’s the trick… that’s how they can avoid a GPL violation.. they don’t distribute a binary linked to GPL’d kernel code. They distribute binary blobs that go part of the way to a kernel module and then let each client system finish the job and do the last step that links to the kernel. It’s sneaky.. it works to avoid legal liability…but the tradeoff is boot time performance while lrm-manager does its magic.
Until you are willing to stop and look closely at how the technology actually works and why it works the way it does… there’s really nothing more that can be said about how to best re-engineer it without regressions.
-jef
Jef: I understand how the lrm script works to get around legal issues. But the point remains that I don’t see a good reason for excluding the STA driver even if they wanted to do away with lrm. Surely they could have figured out some other way to include a script for compiling STA; minimally, the package should be on the live CD, along with build-essential, ndiswrapper, etc., so it’s more accessible.
In the absence of a good technical reason for not including the driver, I’m left suspecting that it’s part of someone’s agenda of spreading the Free software gospel at the expense of basic functionality. Maybe I’m wrong and it was just an oversight, but that seems unlikely since the Broadcom chips that need the STA driver are widely used, including for example by Dell (and sure, Dell will customize its machines to include STA, but it seems silly not to put the driver in there by default if it’s clearly necessary for a lot of people).
Jef:
I have no idea what most of that means as I am probably the most computer-ignorant person on this forum, but let me give you my basic understanding: In Jaunty, Ubuntu did some tricky thing to make my wireless work, but it affected boot time. Now, even though the same trick would work, Koala no longer does the tricky thing and my wireless doesn’t work.
Did the boot time get longer in Koala? Were people complaining like crazy about the long boot time? Did the Broadcom/GPL stuff change? Are they prioritizing shortening the boot time from Jaunty to Koala over having most peoples’ wireless cards work out of the box? It just seems to me like if the trick was working in the past, it could still be working now… and hence Chris’ argument that it’s at least partially a philosophical decision.
Chris:
I dispute your claim that you understand how the lrm-manager works based on what you have so far said in this discussion.
You have me in an uncomfortable position here defending the technical decision making by any Canonical employee against shoddy poorly researched journalism. This is something I am fundamentally ill-equipped to do as it runs counter to who I am as a person. My core principles about how the world works is that any technical decision a Canonical employee makes is axiomatically the wrong one. But that doesn’t mean I like watching Canonical getting criticism based on factually incorrect information either just because that criticism happens to align with my personal agenda.
I dispute your claim that surely lrm could be removed in a way that prevented regressions for broadcom chipset users. You aren’t bringing up any iisue that wasn’t brought up in the thread from May. Instead I’ll argue that lrm was doomed to cause regressions at some point because it was never properly engineered as a long term solution and all it did was set unmaintainably high expectations for the continued access of proprietary drivers.
If you don’t accept the reasoning set forth by the Ubuntu developer responsible for the removal of the lrm stuff in the url citation I provided… the only reference so far to an actual publicly archive developer discussion on the issue.. a discussion I found within 5 minutes of searching for it..and yet you missed reading before deciding to stand up on your soapbox to write your article….then walk yourself over to the Ubuntu kernel team list and ask for a restatement of the rationale and see what Tim and the other developers think about your potential technical solutions for the regression.
You don’t get to just sit back and brush aside the facts as communicated back in May just because you are a fan of your own poorly constructed conspiracy theory which paint Canonical employees as being fanatical free software advocates. I challenge you to find any evidence which supports that claim. It takes some pretty big cajones to sit here and imply that Tim Gardner’s stated boot time budget constraint goals forcing the removal of the lrm-manager infrastructure were somehow not the whole truth.
You may not accept the boot time budget as a valid reason but its inappropriate to speculate about a hidden motive. If its okay to do that, I can just as well speculate that the real reason for the regression is gross incompetence and lack of technical ability in the Ubuntu kernel developer team. But that wouldn’t be fair of me either, because I don’t see a way to meet both the aggressive boot time targets for a default install and keep broadcom wireless working out of the box.
-jef
Sounds like somebody’s pissy that they had to do some extra steps in order to get their Broadcom wireless working.
I have a system with a Broadcom network cards and have “enjoyed” the fun of getting it to work.
If there is an open source alternative, then I have no issues, but to include closed-source drivers/etc. just to make it “convenient” not only goes against GPL, it goes against the open source philosophy!
Let’s imagine Canonical starts putting in proprietary stuff into Ubuntu(we’ll keep the GPL out of this for now); what would stop them from making and putting in other proprietary things which have a secondary benefit of giving them an edge of Red Hat or some other competitor? Then Novell may start putting things in.. pretty soon, you have a bunch of half-Microsoft-Windows like distributions injecting proprietary code into open source, compatibility starts to go out the window and the cooperation aspect of open source gets shot!
Then there is the question, why would anybody further developing open source drivers or even notice that what is being used is proprietary if these closed source pieces are included out-of-the-box.
And I would not think that Ubuntu/Canonical is too “small” to warrant any whistle-blowers! They could come from outside (Microsoft, Apple, etc.) or inside. Just look at all of the anti-Ubuntu blog posts and any one of them, given the technical ability, would bring this to light in a heartbeat.
I think going down the road of including proprietary pieces is good for the short, “instant gratification” route, but a long-term killer. I would hope Canonical is forward (long term) thinkers.
Hi, I’m a Stallman-esque fanatic.
What is the matter? nothing very important.
Ubuntu is largely the most widespread GNU/Linux distro even if it haven’t b43 firmware or nvidia and ati driver out-of-the-box.
Jokey-gtk are a reasonable solution: it give evidence about non-free and unsupported drivers. This is important not only for ethical reasons but for pratical reasons. User *must* knows that some packages are *unsupported* because license and closed source.
I’m part of a Ubuntu support forum: when users talks about ATI videocard issue I remember to them that fglrx is *unsupported* because it is *non-free*. Any problem with fglrx is a problem between ATI and the users.
When I write this, then complaints against ubuntu stops and users curse AMD/ATI. As it should be.
Let’s just pretend Karmic Koala nerver happened. It’s like the Windows ME of the Linux distributions. (And yes, that’s a die-hard Ubuntu user speaking here.)
Often it is some pro-GPL anti-newbie developer attitude that leads to nonfunctional hardware. But Jefs argument might also be sound. There just might have been too many regressions in 9.10, and the broadcom driver could just be the latest victim of the grub2/upstart/initramfs/*.* transition. Too little time to fix everything.
Again, let’s pretend Karmic was never released.
Count me in with a vote for proprietary binary drivers for wireless networking devices.
While I understand and agree with Ubuntu’s desire to have a completely open distribution, I need to balance that with eliminating the perception that “Wireless doesn’t work on Ubuntu”. This was a problem a few years back, and the Internet has a long memory. As we all know, wireless now *does* work on Ubuntu, but we need to get that message out there, and removing support is not the way to do that.
Canonical — you’re shooting yourselves in the foot here! Leaving aside for the moment the question of *why* wireless vendors feel the need to hold the firmware necessary to use their parts so close to their vests, just accept that they do, and *work around the problem* by bending the rigid “open source only” attitude just enough to get the job done. You can work to change the vendors’ policies as a parallel effort, but your number one goal should be to make Ubuntu as easy to use as possible, and to get it into as many hands as possible.
Once there’s a large enough user base for Linux, the wireless vendors will see it as a market force, and may loosen the strings a bit on the drivers. But right now, just as Ubuntu has made huge strides in wireless device support, taking a moral stand which reduces that support in any way, is an incredibly bad move.
It was stated here that access to the source code does not matter to end users, so Free Software principles are not that important. There is also a general attitude here, often displayed by Chris, of hostility toward anyone who agrees with Richard Stallman. I’ve called him on it many times before. “Freetard” and other derogatory terms are some of his childish weapons.
Consider this. In the legal world, court documents are part of the public record. They are the source code of the legal system. They are freely accessible to every citizen. Yet, few people are skilled at lawyering. Does that mean access to these documents is not important? No. It is essential to maintaining the freedom of every citizen, because without them, lawyers could not defend the rights of those citizens.
Users of Free Software benefit from having access to its source code whether or not they are skilled at using it, just as citizens benefit from access to court documents even though they cannot skillfully use them.
Frankly, I’m sick of Chris’s childish name-calling. It makes him look like an idiot and drags the discussion down to the level of playground bickering.
The only problems with the author’s suggestion is
1) that in my long experience with Linux, non-free drivers generally are a lot more buggy than open source drivers for the simple reason that proprietary vendors do not put much time and effort into Linux drivers, and unlike open source drivers where volunteers can and do fix bugs, non-free Linux drivers aren’t quickly fixed. This is certainly true with graphics cards, and
2) that third party vendors generally do not make their drivers available for onward distribution. In other words, you the end user have to download the drivers from the vendor’s own download site. This means the drivers cannot be legally included with distributions.
Hence the only solution is to distribute open source drivers as default with the distribution, but to make it as simple as possible to install the non-free drivers from the Internet by providing automated applications or scripts that do this.
Duh… if user are going to be installing linux then they should verify their hardware is supported before taking the plunge.
What if there is a serious bug or a security leak in an included closed-source firmware? How can Canonical provide a fix in a reasonable time frame without access to the source code? What can Canonical do if a large customer files a lawsuit because Canonical did not fixed an issue in a closed source firmware that caused severe damage to the customer?
Advocating breaking the law, Chris? Apparently so.
Actually, the chances of getting sued for including Broadcom’s firmware in Ubuntu without written permission are *HUGE*. Chris himself acknowledges that Broadcom does not grant this permission. Chris is thus actually advocating the violation of copyright law here.
No, thanks. I’ll simply stay away from Broadcom wireless and stick with Ralink and Realtek. They actually do allow unrestricted redistribution of their firmwares.
–SYG
[…] The Case for Non-Free Firmware By Default Ubuntu comes with a nice application called “Hardware Drivers” (a.k.a. jockey-gtk) for installing proprietary drivers for wireless cards and other devices that lack open-source support. This is great, except when your only connection to the Internet is wireless and you have no way to download the driver or firmware you need. Here’s why this situation should change. […]
The STA Broadcom driver was on my Karmic downloaded cd. After realizing the wifi driver wasn’t available, I enabled my Karmic CDROM as the only available Repository, and since I couldn’t connect online – I disable all others temporarily. Bingo!! it found the driver on the disk!!
Jockey then reported it and my Broadcom B43XX was working.
Can’t say I can see why shipping with the default wireless drivers would be an issue. Ubuntu ships with both ATI and Nvidia closed drivers. Why is wireless different?
In fact if we want to go all open-source we can wave Compiz good by.
I also don’t understand why companies who decide to provide open source drivers need to go and write a whole new driver. Just open source the existing working and mature driver already!
K-Alec:
Sigh, I had assumed that Chris had actually checked the file list for the desktop CD before making the claim that it wasn’t there. Sadly Chris couldn’t even be bothered to check the filelist that Canonical makes available for easy reference.
http://releases.ubuntu.com/karmic/ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.list
Now that you have confirmed for us that the driver code does exist on the CD and it can be used via jockey without having internet access… I’m left wandering why Chris wrote the article at all.
-jef
I have had some problems with Broadcom devices this summer with Fedora and OpenSuse variants for a netbook. The Ubuntu Netbook Remix (Jaunty) worked just fine as it included the proprietary bits from Broadcom.
Still, if it is correct that Ubuntu pulled the proprietary driver from Karmic, I have no problem with that and I think they are right to do so. It will be a major inconvenience to be sure. I’ll work around it. But, I do believe that in the long run, it is worth it to suffer some inconvenience today in order to win more freedom tomorrow. Which is precisely what we have been getting for the last few years. A couple of years ago, wireless linux was abysmal. Now, except for a few holdouts like Broadcom, it just works. We have made huge progress.
If you must rant about driver problems, why not rant at the companies that persist in hiding their products behind closed, proprietary and buggy software. Or don’t buy products with closed drivers. It really is that simple.
Regards
Philippe
So the STA source is on the CD. Apologies for not realizing that; I used a live USB stick to install, like a lot of other people, and jockey doesn’t help there. I could have searched through the CD to find the files manually, but if Ubuntu is going to ship with this code anyway, why not have it installed by default for the benefit of people who aren’t geeks and don’t know how to enable the CD as a repository? Hence the validity of the debate (not to mention the b43 firmware issues).
So, Jef, I would say you’re still in the logical quandary of hating on me for my perceived failures as a journalist, computer user, human being, etc., and on Canonical since you think every decision it makes is necessarily the wrong one.
(I’d be interested to know what kind of reasoning leads to such a worldview, by the way; I know you’re on a crusade to demonize Ubuntu for the benefit of Fedora, presumably because you’re jealous of the former’s relative success, but don’t you think reasoned evaluations would be in order before categorically dismissing everything Canonical does?)
Chris,
I’ll stow away the sarcasm for a paragraph or two and be crystal clear.
I haven’t commented on your abilites as a computer user nor as a human being. But I think you’ve cross the boundaries of appropriate behavior that you have personally affirmed to abide by when you signed the Ubuntu CoC. How you have chosen to approach a discussion about a technical decision in Karmic is appalling. You don’t start constructive discussions about decisions you don’t understand by calling the decisions fanatical and questioning the publicly archived motivations.
And I’ll hate on any journalist who steps on the soapbox and is more concerned about rushing to judgement on motivations and intentions of other people’s actions instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt. Nothing personal. I care about accuracy and about factual information. If you make a habit of consistently writing articles devoid of factually correct information and draw conclusions that are not supported by supporting reference material.. then I’m going to continue to call you out on it. Journalists should be held accountable for what they choose to write about as developers are about what they choose to write code for.
-jef
Ok, why doesn’t somebody go over to Fedora and ask what they did?
I just put Fedora 12 on a system last night and my Broadcom (4309 I think) wireless card worked out-of-the-box. I was flabergasted.
Fedora is one of the more FOSS-focused distributions and if they could make it work then I don’t see why Ubuntu would not be able to incorporate it as well.
Excuse me for being simple here, but if you own a Broadcom chipset doesn’t that grant you the right to have the drivers? And since wireless is one of those things you kinda need to get to the interweb (in some cases) to download *anything* I don’t understand the the logic in not making the drivers readily available offline to the average user.
That said I realize there are legal issues to contend with, and the best way to deal with Broadcom is to not buy their crappy hardware in the first place. But Ubuntu is targeting the average user. The average user doesn’t give a rat’s rearend about political debate when it comes to their computer, they just want it to work. That should be foremost in Canonical’s mind when making these decisions. Make it work and then educate the user as to why we need a better solution. That is the drawback of FOSS. The developers make decisions like this. (In many areas not just drivers.) But they fail to educate the average user as to why the decision is better and what habits the user needs to change to make it work.
And finally while name calling and childish antics are inappropriate. Keep in mind that our intrepid blogger Chris is NOT an accredited journalist. (Correct me if I’m wrong, I’ll retract this whole paragraph.) He’s just a guy with a blog like millions of others on the internet spouting their opinions to the world. Holding him to the same standard as a journalist is unfair. If you don like what he has to say, I invite you to read someone else’s work. But Chris has a valid point of view as as a moderately informed average user, like so many of use out there. The Chris of the world are Ubuntu’s target market, developers would do well to set aside the emotion of such rants and look to the core issue that he and others are writing about.
It would soooo make my day if Fedora violated the GPL by getting Broadcom to work. I imagine, Jef, that if you axiomatically believe that Canonical employees are always wrong, then you also axiomatically believe that Fedora is always right. So that would be an interesting quandary for you as well, as you’d have to defend Fedora for something that you were just gleefully hoping Canonical might do for the purpose of debate.
I would like to agree with snkiz, and add that a cursory search on Google shows that you are a very prolific commenter, while at the same time producing very little content that is not a response to someone else. So, either you do not want to be held to the same standards that you are holding Chris to (i.e. you don’t want to be held accountable as a “journalist”), or there’s just a lot of this going on: http://xkcd.com/386/ .
Either way, the ensuing discussion from the article spurred a lot of interesting debate (beyond the Jef-Chris commentary), and showed that there is a range of opinions about being compatible with proprietary wireless chips.
Lol ya I do that at times, and No I’m not holding Chris or anyone else to any standard really, except listen to what someone has to say not necessarily how they say it. We are not all gifted writers. And besides would you read a blog written by me? I’m happy just giving out my two cents now and again.
dragonbite:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_12_Announcement
“The openfwwf open source Broadcom firmware is included by default. This means wireless networking will be available out of the box on some Broadcom chipsets.”
Please, if you find any bugs using the new open broadcom firmware as shipped by Fedora make sure you file them. Unlike the proprietary broadcom drivers which even the Ubuntu developers admit they just ignore because they can’t fix proprietary brokenness… this open firmware can be fixed so they bug reports are valuable and have a much higher chance of being addressed.
Even if all you do is is run Fedora long enough to test the and report back about the broadcom functionality and then move back to Ubuntu.. you’ll be helping all linux users get better wireless support in the long run including users of future versions of Ubuntu. Testing and reporting back on the proprietary drivers helps no one.
-jef
snkiz:
Ack, I wasn’t clear. I meant that Jef is a prolific commenter – my second comment was directed at him (while also agreeing with you).
Hope that makes sense!
Let me rephrase:
I would like to agree with snkiz, and add that a cursory search on Google shows that you (Jef Spaleta) are a very prolific commenter, while at the same time producing very little content that is not a response to someone else. So, either you do not want to be held to the same standards that you are holding Chris to (i.e. you don’t want to be held accountable as a “journalist”), or there’s just a lot of this going on: http://xkcd.com/386/ .
@ hsp
No problem I laugh. because when you said that I did Google my usual user name, and I do at times (a lot apparently ;p ) spout off myself.
hsp:
No I don’t hold myself to the same standard as Chris. That would be unfair to Chris. I hold myself to a higher standard than I hold others.
Maybe… we’d all be better off.. if there was several orders of magnitude less poorly researched and factually incorrect content. I certainly don’t speak to a subject unless I feel I’ve made a reasonable effort to research it and inform myself and I am prepared to defend any of the conclusions I have drawn.
If I’ve made a factually incorrect statement, then please, point me to correct information. Conclusions are only as good as the information they are based on. I try very hard to extremely conscientious about referencing source material when drawing conclusions or providing criticism to give people a fair chance to point out faulty information on which I’m building faulty conclusions.
-jef
jef:
I believe the point is its Chris’s opinion and he’s entitled to it. Just because you believe your opinion is based facts doesn’t make it or those facts any more or less right. Developers are not infallible, in my four years using Linux I’ve seen some colossal blunders that people like yourself champion as the “right” way just because their favorite developer team said it is so. Cut the guy some slack man there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
BTW if Fedora is so great why wont it even boot on my 10 year old system (with Nvidia no less.) when Ubuntu starts just fine?
snkiz:
What opinion did I express in the course of this discussion do disagree with?
If Chris has simply stated that he did not understand why the broadcom drivers weren’t available on the Karmic livecd and simply stated that in his opinion that was a serious regression there’d be nothing to argue about. I make no issue of his feelings about this being a regression important enough to write an article about. But he went much further than that making unsubstantiated claims as to personal motivation for the decision. You can point out a decision is bad without casting those who make it as fanatical.
In this case there’s more than enough to debate concerning how the boot time target goals took priority over keeping the restricted module stuff working regression free. An aspect of the decision making Chris completely missed by failing to research what the developers have said at the time the decision was made. Boot time targets are going to get more aggressive for Lucid. What other functionality is Canonical willing to break to achieve its pragmatic goals for even faster target boot times in Lucid?
-jef
I disagree with you tearing Chris a new one based on admitidy somewhat childish behavior. And blasting him for not finding some obscure post on a developer mailing list. He only offered a theory as to why the regression happened, again his opinion, and one witch is not made from whole cloth. If you’ve been following Ubuntu for any length of time I’d be surprised that you never had the feeling that decisions are sometimes made based on political agendas, or just pure stubborness. No one it their right mind tied with Ubuntu is going to come right out and say that. But I’ve had that feeling before as well, and not just from them. I also disagree with Ubuntu’s decision to put boot time over a whole bunch of other issues. I’m disturbed when ever things get pushed ahead while there are clearly regressions to be sorted out. You may have some obscure facts to back you up, but thats not how you started your argument. You attacked the author personally and only then came out with facts when you got called on it.
snkiz:
Conspiracy theories are fun. My personal favorites involve Mark Shuttleworth being replaced by a malevolent alien entity when he was in space. You know I just get that evil alien entity feeling every time I look at Mark… the same one I got when I looked at my 2nd grade teacher.
what was personal about my attack? Did I call Chris names? Did I say he is a bad person for writing a bad article? Did I at any point question his motivations for slandering Stallman’s name and painting Ubuntu developers as fanatics? I did none of those things. What I have attacked..and what I will continue to attack is poorly researched articles full of bad assumptions and factual errors. It’s not personal. I don’t even consider Chris to be particularly bad at this relative to the average of his peers who are writing for any number of other sites. Sadly this sort of poor research habits are quite common in the new media. But he did sign the Ubuntu CoC voluntarily… and I think he should be expected to be held to at least the standard of behavior set forth in that document an refrain from the name calling and conspiracy theories when in disagreement over technical decisions are made.
If I were going to turn this into a personal attack I’d take the name Tozzi and start using it a synomym to shoddy journalism and use phrases like ” so and so is a Tozzi-esque journalist” in the same way Chris felt it was appropriate to turn Stallman’s name into a derogatory jibe. That would be a clear personal attack and there’s no call for that.
-jef
Jef,
While I think it’s ostensibly a good goal to rid the world of inaccuracies, I think that your one-man crusade to rid the internets of anything that isn’t rigorously (at least to your standards) researched is axiomatically wrong (i.e. against the spirit of the internet), super inefficient and brings down the average level of open-source happiness (at least for everyone besides you, presumably, unless this is a heavy burden for you). Furthermore, as a self-appointed arbitrator of “truth,” while I trust the facts you present, by your own statement of illogical axiomatic dismissal of everything that Canonical does makes me distrust at the very least the stories you choose to “pursue” and the bloggers you chew up for honest mistakes. At least Chris is clearly on a blog dedicated to Ubuntu. You seem to think that either a) your bias is unimportant to the discussion, or b) people will listen to your more if you don’t make it clear.
I also disagree with your assessment of the RMS situation. You are acting like Chris was attacking him personally, as though he doesn’t represent an ideology or school of thought. Like if I were to say, “Gosh I hate Reaganomics,” that you might get mad at me for insulting the late man, rather than the policies and ideologies he pushed. Sure, it’s an abrasive technique, but… have you read any of your latest posts, Jef? Sort of like the kettle calling the pot black.
I’m sure WorksWithU is so thrilled that we’re having this completely esoteric debate on their comments so I’m gonna check out. I’m sure I’ll get all worked up about one of your comments again sometime very soon…
hsp:
What about my bias is hidden? It’s not like I’ve pulled in punches or sneaked up on an Ubuntu developer community and pretended to a supporter and then shoved a knife in their back. Honestly I don’t know how to be any more blatant about my bias. I guess I could get a tattoo on my butt of Shuttleworth as the devil or something, but then I’d have to attach a photo of the tattoo of every post I make.
I threw in my sarcastic comment about axiomatically considering everything Canonical does as wrong as a blatant over-the-top reminder about how absurd it is for me to be put in a position defending Ubuntu decision making against someone who is a self-described Ubuntu supporter. Its craziness.. axiomatically so.
-jef
Quote from the article
“Better yet, I’d like to see Ubuntu take a stance and ship the closed-source firmware by default until its open equivalent matures. The chances of being sued are minimal”
This _really_ galls me. Ubuntu are NOT pirates who wilfully disregard licensing. And they should not. But you seem to think they should. I could not disagree more.
To me, this whole discussion (45 posts) just solidifies what I think is the main point of this article: basic functionality to the average user is being relegated to a secondary position because of technical, political, legal, philosophical reasons.
I have enough experience and knowledge to understand all these technical details if I want to, but now I’m wearing my “average-end-user hat”: I don’t care about lightning fast boot times if my notebook does not work with the newer version of Ubuntu (It used to work with the older version). I just want it to work. If the objective is to make Linux use widespread, those in charge of the distros should have this in mind.
It is just my opinion, but, in order to grow, some level of compromise solution must be reached. I believe that the ability to easily install a closed-source driver without Internet access is such an acceptable level.