| 1 |
On Sat, Oct 24, 2015 at 10:07 AM, Roy Bamford <neddyseagoon@g.o> wrote: |
| 2 |
> Lets take that one step further ... |
| 3 |
> Say nVidia buys up all the graphics card chip makers in the world, including Intel. |
| 4 |
> The make a new graphics engine that cannot be supported by open source - only the binary blob exists. |
| 5 |
> That would give us a Social Contract issue. Either drop Xorg altogether or ship a binary driver that could |
| 6 |
> not comply with the social contract. Probably worse, make a distro that supported the blob but not ship the blob. |
| 7 |
> Readers with a long memory will remember a time when the nVidia driver could not be distributed, so Gentoo has been there. |
| 8 |
> Until this whatif, there has always been alternatives. |
| 9 |
|
| 10 |
Well, you could just not use X11. I'm not sure if Gentoo "depends" on |
| 11 |
any packages inside of Gentoo strictly speaking. You can use the |
| 12 |
Gentoo userspace without a Gentoo kernel. You can use a Gentoo kernel |
| 13 |
without the Gentoo userspace. Almost everything in the Gentoo |
| 14 |
userspace also has alternatives available and supplied by Gentoo. If |
| 15 |
you're willing to jump through hoops you can "use Gentoo" while |
| 16 |
avoiding anything that you don't like. |
| 17 |
|
| 18 |
Gentoo has always been pragmatic. We aren't endorsed by the FSF |
| 19 |
because we're considered compromisers on the FOSS ideal, and Debian is |
| 20 |
in the same boat. |
| 21 |
|
| 22 |
If anything, if NVidia were to take over the world we'd probably be |
| 23 |
the distro that is LEAST impacted and which gives users the most |
| 24 |
access to FOSS alternatives, even if we still shipped the NVidia |
| 25 |
drivers. |
| 26 |
|
| 27 |
And that is why I tend to be an advocate of compromise. I think you |
| 28 |
get a lot further in promoting FOSS when you make a usable |
| 29 |
distro/community/whatever that strives to adopt as much FOSS as |
| 30 |
possible without making live miserable, than you do by making a |
| 31 |
community that is more pure but where nobody wants to live. I WANT to |
| 32 |
see FOSS succeed. I want to see us using Gitlab instead of Github or |
| 33 |
whatever. However, given the choice of making it harder for people to |
| 34 |
contribute or allowing them to contribute using non-ideal tools, I'm |
| 35 |
going to tend to favor the latter. |
| 36 |
|
| 37 |
It is better to promote FOSS by offering something better, rather than |
| 38 |
trying to prevent people from using things which they feel are better. |
| 39 |
Firefox killed off IE because it was better, not because it was FOSS. |
| 40 |
I'd go further and argue that it was better BECAUSE it was FOSS. We |
| 41 |
shouldn't constrain ourselves to a world where we have to pick and |
| 42 |
choose. |
| 43 |
|
| 44 |
So, why aren't we using Gitlab? Well, apparently it is a pita to host |
| 45 |
on our infra, and we don't have a lot of infra to go around. I see a |
| 46 |
lot of potential solutions, but I think the best long-term approach is |
| 47 |
to better-distribute our infra. Offer openid/etc so that projects can |
| 48 |
build their own stuff and tie in authentication. Make it easier for |
| 49 |
people to "fork their own Gentoo infra" by duplicating all the |
| 50 |
configuration of our systems and tie it into our own authentication |
| 51 |
via openid, which then means that anybody can contribute patches back |
| 52 |
to infra, etc. In general, make infra work a bit more like FOSS, |
| 53 |
which I think is in keeping with our social contract anyway. |
| 54 |
|
| 55 |
I think we're better off making Gentoo BETTER through FOSS than |
| 56 |
arguing about whether others can try to make it better without using |
| 57 |
FOSS. |
| 58 |
|
| 59 |
-- |
| 60 |
Rich |
Archives