Em Segunda-feira 22. Março 2010, às 03.52.45, Robinson Tryon escreveu: > All joking aside, I agree that there are vendors out there whose > drivers are non-free, but I think that this is definitely a problem > that can be side-stepped. When Nokia builds the successor to the n900, > what if you give preference to components with FOSS drivers? > > If you approach a vendor and say "we'll use your _____ chip" in the > n920 (or whatever it'll be named) as long as you can provide a FOSS > driver for it," then I think you'll see vendors stepping up and > freeing their driver code in order to win the contract.
That's only an option as long as there's an option to choose from.
Unlike the PC and laptop world, the ARM world is a very closed beast and chips
are very integrated to one another, for performance and power issues. You
usually can't pick and choose: you buy a package from a manufacturer, which
may or may not include the hardware in question.
Also note we're talking about not buying one item, but something in the order
of hundreds of thousands to tens of millions: you need a good price, a good
logistic service, etc. Open-sourceness is just one item in the checklist.
So, it's not as simple as "opensource your driver or we won't use buy
1,000,000 units from you". What if that's a bluff?
Don't get me wrong: I'd love to see it open source too. But don't take the
naïve view of thinking this is just a matter of will. It's not.
--
Thiago Macieira - thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
Senior Product Manager - Nokia, Qt Development Frameworks
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