----- Roshan d_rosh2001@yahoo.co.in wrote:
http://blogs.gnome.org/view/ryanl/2006/12/30/0
This article *_indirectly_* speaks about the dominance of Non-Free software right from the early years of computing, and also recognizes the efforts of FSF to make users realize, that Non-Free isn't any good. Perhaps, it speaks about being "It works!" / "It should work whatsoever" approach.
-- FSF-India Fellow Associate http://www.gnu.org.in
So whats new is in this new article!
Let me put it this way too, economics dictate the terms, and i can atleast predict the future where creating and maintaining any sufficienty complex proprietary software system is going to be very very expensive in comparison to free(dom) software.
A time will come, when in comparison to past, when we would have used few free software with maybe a completely proprietary operating system, to a completely free(dom) operating software with maybe some marginal, unimportant and optional binary only blobs. And those binary only blobs would be cheaper to maintain for short time periods for the short sighted companies.
And regarding one example of a binary only blob in case of Atheros based wifi card that atheros declined to open up (for madwifi GPLed drivers), now there is a community supported GPLed replacement (though still in beta). Its only a matter of time.
Maybe others in list can site more such examples.
And regarding binary only windoz blobs (lets say device driver in windoz), i have seen/ heard many horror stories where the manufacturer stopped providing driver support for newer versions of windoz, for perfectly working hardware devices, which are now more or less useless in newer versions of windoz. Webcams/ TV tuner cards/ 3d cards/ win modems etc etc..
I too have a 3dfx voodoo card in an old but good faithful machine that may not work in newer version of windowz, the manufacturing company is already dead and I cant see any binary blob to help me out on windoz in case I install anything better than windoz 2000-2(98).
Regarding the above sites blog, i would consider it as a **transition only** phase.