4 ms·
>commercial vendors are hesitant to allow anybody to make whatever changes they want Why? If a vendor sells a fingerprint scanner or something why do they need
by pydry 4y ago
>commercial vendors are hesitant to allow anybody to make whatever changes they want
Why? If a vendor sells a fingerprint scanner or something why do they need the driver to be closed source? Why does somebody tweaking the source bother them?
I've never really understood this. Sure, Microsoft word needs to be closed source but why a driver?
- hakfoo 4y agoI always figured a lot of it is covering over garbage hardware in software. Whatever "clever" feature it had doesn't actually work and they fake it in the drivers, or they're having to patch around a maze of different buggy hardware revisions. Nobody wants to show the world how that sausage is made.
- ye-olde-sysrq 4y agoI think a lot of it is also just a general amount of fear for (from the companys perspective) no benefit. There's a lot of fear that if the code is visible, you could be sued for its contents or it could be otherwise used against you in court, competitors could "steal" your effort, etc. Plus there's just a lot of belief in the nonfree circles that the software freedom movement is just religious zealot hippies who think software should never be paid for and that microsoft programmers should work for free and starve, and that anyone who does develop novel software should have it immediately ripped off and copied by competitors and make no money because capitalism is bad. (I'm being a bit hyperbolic but not much.)