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>...collaboration with the industry to develop a camera stack... protecting vendor core IP. Can't say I have any interest in protecting "vendor IP" in their cr

by catern 7y ago

>...collaboration with the industry to develop a camera stack... protecting vendor core IP. Can't say I have any interest in protecting "vendor IP" in their crappy camera drivers. Let vendors open their blobs! Closed source camera drivers will just reduce quality and increase bugginess.

Jonnax 7y ago
What's the point of this all or nothing attitude? This looks like a move to getting better support. The alternative is getting nothing.
- matheusmoreira 7y ago
  The point is to get high quality software that actually belongs to us all. Accepting closed source drivers means accepting the Windows model where companies release buggy drivers for one or two combinations of processor architecture and operating system version before ending all support. The company gets to open wash their reputation while still keeping us dependent on them for scraps of support. Giving us nothing at all would've been more respectful than this. Letting companies protect their intellectual property benefits absolutely nobody but them. They don't have our best interests in mind, only their own. The ideal solution is to reverse engineer their hardware's interface and produce a competing implementation which will no doubt be better than their minimum viable product. My laptop has a backlit keyboard with RGB LEDs and I managed to figure out how it works and make my own program to replace the manufacturer's. I'm so happy I don't have to boot into Windows just to use their slow software anymore. They don't even have to give us source code. Documentation would eliminate the need to actually reverse engineer the hardware. They could just release that data and all interested parties would start hacking. The problem would take care of itself at no cost to them.
- shmerl 7y ago
  We don't need more blobs. Such kind of approach is not helping.
- serf 7y ago
  > What's the point of this all or nothing attitude? the point is to try to enact change in corporate behavior with regards to consumer devices. >The alternative is getting nothing. goes both ways. If I don't buy a product that uses binary blobs all over the place, they don't sell the product to me. Supporting products that support DRM systems natively does a lot to support the underlying DRM system, too. It sets a native expectation of DRM among developers, fostering the use. And worst of all, I can't try to fix blobs without labor that is so intensive that it renders the very idea moot.
- endgame 7y ago
  Because when we were more "all or nothing", corps were meeting us halfway and starting to open their drivers. Pragmatism works today, but sacrifices tomorrow.
- jdnenej 7y ago
  Because all or nothing forces someone to compromise. By default almost all vendors would pick to keep things proprietary. If going open source is the only possible option then some vendors will release the source and if they don't then hobbyists will write their own drivers since the work is very useful. Wikipedia faced a similar issue when considering using https everywhere. Some countries were blocking certain pages on Wikipedia and https would break that so it was uncertain if they would just block the whole of Wikipedia now. As it turns out they mostly did not block the whole website and those selected pages became unblocked because the alternative was given by the all or nothing approach was too far.
  - izacus 7y ago
    > Because all or nothing forces someone to compromise When exactly did that work? In which project? All this attitude did was to make Linux unusable for many people, making it marginal and thus a smaller power at pushing companies to support and opensource drivers. Things started changing AFTER more people were able to adopt it due to less black and white attitude of some distributions.
    - m4rtink 7y ago
      A goog example is Open WRT - the project basicaly got started due to LinkSys finally fulfilling their GPL obligation and releasing drivers to one of their Linux based wireless routers.
    - matheusmoreira 7y ago
      The Linux kernel is the best example of the success of such a strategy. The kernel's driver interfaces are unstable by design: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/process/stable-api-nonsense.rst https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/process/stable-api-... https://yarchive.net/comp/linux/gcc_vs_kernel_stability.html https://yarchive.net/comp/linux/gcc_vs_kernel_stability.html https://youtu.be/iiED1K98lnw https://youtu.be/iiED1K98lnw There are technical reasons for this but it also serves another purpose: maintaining leverage over companies that would take advantage. The Linux kernel receives tens of patches every hour. If companies refuse to upstream their drivers, they are left behind and must pay the maintenance costs or drop support. Their products are worse for it. I wish every free software project had this power.
seemslegit 7y ago
Those are some weasel vibes from 'open-source-friednly' - it has the word 'friendly' in it which invokes positive connotations but is used to actually distinguish itself from 'open-source'

by catern 7y ago

Jonnax 7y ago

What's the point of this all or nothing attitude? This looks like a move to getting better support. The alternative is getting nothing.

matheusmoreira 7y ago
The point is to get high quality software that actually belongs to us all. Accepting closed source drivers means accepting the Windows model where companies release buggy drivers for one or two combinations of processor architecture and operating system version before ending all support. The company gets to open wash their reputation while still keeping us dependent on them for scraps of support. Giving us nothing at all would've been more respectful than this. Letting companies protect their intellectual property benefits absolutely nobody but them. They don't have our best interests in mind, only their own. The ideal solution is to reverse engineer their hardware's interface and produce a competing implementation which will no doubt be better than their minimum viable product. My laptop has a backlit keyboard with RGB LEDs and I managed to figure out how it works and make my own program to replace the manufacturer's. I'm so happy I don't have to boot into Windows just to use their slow software anymore. They don't even have to give us source code. Documentation would eliminate the need to actually reverse engineer the hardware. They could just release that data and all interested parties would start hacking. The problem would take care of itself at no cost to them.
shmerl 7y ago
We don't need more blobs. Such kind of approach is not helping.
serf 7y ago
> What's the point of this all or nothing attitude? the point is to try to enact change in corporate behavior with regards to consumer devices. >The alternative is getting nothing. goes both ways. If I don't buy a product that uses binary blobs all over the place, they don't sell the product to me. Supporting products that support DRM systems natively does a lot to support the underlying DRM system, too. It sets a native expectation of DRM among developers, fostering the use. And worst of all, I can't try to fix blobs without labor that is so intensive that it renders the very idea moot.
endgame 7y ago
Because when we were more "all or nothing", corps were meeting us halfway and starting to open their drivers. Pragmatism works today, but sacrifices tomorrow.
jdnenej 7y ago
Because all or nothing forces someone to compromise. By default almost all vendors would pick to keep things proprietary. If going open source is the only possible option then some vendors will release the source and if they don't then hobbyists will write their own drivers since the work is very useful. Wikipedia faced a similar issue when considering using https everywhere. Some countries were blocking certain pages on Wikipedia and https would break that so it was uncertain if they would just block the whole of Wikipedia now. As it turns out they mostly did not block the whole website and those selected pages became unblocked because the alternative was given by the all or nothing approach was too far.
- izacus 7y ago
  > Because all or nothing forces someone to compromise When exactly did that work? In which project? All this attitude did was to make Linux unusable for many people, making it marginal and thus a smaller power at pushing companies to support and opensource drivers. Things started changing AFTER more people were able to adopt it due to less black and white attitude of some distributions.
  - m4rtink 7y ago
    A goog example is Open WRT - the project basicaly got started due to LinkSys finally fulfilling their GPL obligation and releasing drivers to one of their Linux based wireless routers.
  - matheusmoreira 7y ago
    The Linux kernel is the best example of the success of such a strategy. The kernel's driver interfaces are unstable by design: https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/process/stable-api-nonsense.rst https://www.kernel.org/doc/Documentation/process/stable-api-... https://yarchive.net/comp/linux/gcc_vs_kernel_stability.html https://yarchive.net/comp/linux/gcc_vs_kernel_stability.html https://youtu.be/iiED1K98lnw https://youtu.be/iiED1K98lnw There are technical reasons for this but it also serves another purpose: maintaining leverage over companies that would take advantage. The Linux kernel receives tens of patches every hour. If companies refuse to upstream their drivers, they are left behind and must pay the maintenance costs or drop support. Their products are worse for it. I wish every free software project had this power.

seemslegit 7y ago

Those are some weasel vibes from 'open-source-friednly' - it has the word 'friendly' in it which invokes positive connotations but is used to actually distinguish itself from 'open-source'