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I think your take on this is very wrong. An open source driver written once will work for all future versions of Fuschia. Right? That reduces the effort for
by VikingCoder 6y ago
I think your take on this is very wrong.
An open source driver written once will work for all future versions of Fuschia. Right? That reduces the effort for open source developers enormously.
Most security flaws come in above the driver level. Right? Being able to update the OS, despite the hardware manufacturer's laziness, is a huge boon for everyone.
Fuschia is open source. Drivers written for one Fuschia (say, the one Google controls) should work for another Fuschia (say, the one you and your friend forked.) Right? That's a huge win for you.
Whatever incentives you have imagined that hardware manufacturers have, time has proven those incentives don't work. It's far better to take as much control away from them as possible. They will do the minimum amount of work necessary (write new drivers). Then we can all exploit the hardware + driver + Fuschia system.
It has always, and will always, be possible to build propriety drivers. This is minimizing the blast radius of them never being updated, as much as possible.
For these reasons and more, we should all hope Fuschia is successful.
The Android developers who have tried to live on top of Linux are sick of the problems that Linux brings them. Fuschia is an open source direct response to those limitations. It's stunning to me that you would wish them to fail.
"then any improvement that could be added to Fuschia could be added to Linux". Explain to me why we still have BSD? Not all problems are solved by Linux. The sooner you accept that, the better off we will all be.
It's like you're wishing Clang would die, because we can always just improve GCC. That's demonstrably false. Just like saying everything good in Fuschia can be added to Linux. No, it can't.
"We don't need a new operating system whose only advantage is that it's easier to write proprietary drivers."
Wait, if it's easier to write propriety drivers, doesn't that lower the barrier to making low-cost phones? Well, Christ, sign me up. Do you have any idea how many billion people have a low-cost smart phone as their first computing device? If we lower the cost even more, that will broaden the reach even more.
Do you seriously not get that the other major phone OS is completely closed source? Maybe put a little faith in the people who have developed the most successful competing operating system that's open source?
- josephcsible 6y ago> An open source driver Lost you already. Since Fuchsia uses a pushover license instead of a copyleft license, the vendors' drivers aren't going to be open source. Look how many companies today don't open-source their Linux drivers, and they're breaking the law by not doing so. It's going to be so much worse when there's "nothing" wrong with keeping them proprietary.
- VikingCoder 6y agoHowever hard it is to produce an open source driver, that's how hard it is. Sometimes the hardware vendors do it. Sometimes dedicated developers produce an open source, clean room driver. So, when an open source driver exists, Fuschia will make it useful for a long time.
- michaelmrose 6y agoWith linux they are required to release some version of their driver even if its for an old kernel. Without any source it will be hard to produce a driver ever. Look at nvidia cards which still have shit drivers after how many years? Further its entirely possible for a device to require signed drivers and their is even a security incentive to doing so. They don't have to ever let you have your own drivers for their hardware.
- VikingCoder 6y agoThere exists hardware that you are screwed by. How is that Fuschia's fault? How is that anyone in the open source operating system world's fault? Given the fact that some hardware is completely impenetrable, why would someone wish harm upon Fuschia?
- michaelmrose 6y agoA multi billion dollar company doesn't need you to shield its efforts from criticism. You have somehow anthropomorphized an OS project and are treating it like a frail animal in need of your protection. It's composed of actual adults who presumably can read critical comments without coming to "harm". Hardware running software that is either proprietary or based on permissively licensed software is everywhere. It's usually impractical or impossible to run your own software on such devices. There is no particular reason to trust Google any more than any other big company. Corporate persons judged by the moral standards one would apply to people are nearly always bad people even wherein most of the people therein are OK to good. Trusting them beyond their own self interest is nearly always a mistake.
- nmcain 6y agoAs a developer of a Fuchsia fork, I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, not all components are opensource ATM, (like the khadas VIM2 bootloader), but at least they are available.
- VikingCoder 6y agoCan you tell us more about the goals of your fork? I'd love to see a list of the problems you have with Fuschia or how Fuschia is being managed. Maybe as a new top-level post on HN?