[Mageia-dev] free software purity question

[Johnny A. Solbu]

On Thursday 19 July 2012 04:35, blind Pete wrote:
> My attitude to non-free firmware is in flux.  At the moment 
> I am annoyed by it, but accept it as a fact of life and just 
> install it.  

I am more that just anoyed. I flat out refuse to install proprietary drivers, as I don't trust them. The reason is that we can't independently verify that they haven't included a backdoor with the driver, to spy on us or the like. Now, I don't believe that they do, but we can't verify it. Also we can't change it to suit our needs.
The sacrifice is performance and functionality.

All graphics cards work without closed drivers. I have yet to see one that doesn't work. The sacrifice here is usually 3D performance and sharing the screen with another monitor for cards that have two outputs. I can live with that.

Wireless are more of a hasle. Many simply doesn't work without closed drivers.
That is not a problem for me, as I prefer and use wired connections anyway.

-- 
Johnny A. Solbu
PGP key ID: 0xFA687324
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