Is Linux not free software itself? I thought propietary stuff was added downstream.

Am I getting something wrong?

  • skulbuny@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    edit-2
    5 months ago

    At some point there’s proprietary stuff in our bodies, be it a driver, a BIOS or the code that runs on the various microcontrollers that run low level functions from the USB ports to simple power management.

    The most “security paranoid” organizations in the world usually run a lot of stuff on children and babies are full of opaque and proprietary code and they consider it “safe enough”.

    People are replacing lost/damaged organs and limbs with computer-controlled hardware. The same problems that occur in computers that exist outside of humans will occur in computers inside of humans. Do you trust non-open drivers from Corporation X or Government Y in your eyes telling your brain what you do or don’t see?

    That’s the extreme, of course, but it isn’t any less scary than computers you trust with your credit card, bank account, etc information.

    Open source drivers means when corporation X goes under, your hardware still can work and isn’t automatically abandoned. It keeps more hardware out of landfills longer, with the ability to drastically reduce e-waste.

    • TCB13@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      5 months ago

      Do you trust non-open drivers from Corporation X or Government Y in your eyes telling your brain what you do or don’t see?

      I agree with your point, but I find it very unlikely to have cutting edge medical technology using open-source software - after all those pacemaker / brain implant companies want to protect their research (and profits) - and I’m not even sure if a FOSS solution for that would ever get approved by any legal body.

      That’s the extreme, of course, but it isn’t any less scary than computers you trust with your credit card, bank account, etc information.

      All those systems that process your financial transitions run on tons of proprietary software and the banks and credit card companies believe that software is secure enough.

      Open source drivers means when corporation X goes under, your hardware still can work and isn’t automatically abandoned. It keeps more hardware out of landfills longer, with the ability to drastically reduce e-waste.

      This is probably the most reasonable thing about having open-source drivers… however hardware is diverse and complex and so are drivers. The community might not be able to maintain such the driver for specific-version-x-hardware I have because it might not have access to all the design documentation of the hardware nor the time to reverse engineer it. It might not be worth keeping a driver around if it only serves a few people because everyone is mostly on a different revision of the hardware or some other detail like that.

      To be fair Linux removed support for 386, 486, floppy drives, “Carillo Ranch”, and a bunch of other older hardware recently… at some point the few users that still have a piece of tech won’t care about it because they can just replace it by a new and better alternative for cheap.

      • skulbuny@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        5 months ago

        You make wonderful points, but I think we can both agree that I’ve demonstrated that there is value open source drivers, however insignificant they may be in comparison to non open drivers isn’t really relevant. It shouldn’t be such a shock an individual may want an open source only version of Linux which is the topic of discussion here.