No Longer Wireless-less

Now that open source has largely overcome its earlier problems with limited application availability – there's practically no area today that is not served reasonably well by free software – the remaining challenge is hardware support. That's obviously harder to resolve than the earlier software dearth, since it depends not on the willingness of coders to roll up their sleeves and write stuff, but on hardware manufacturers to release either open source drivers, or at least full specs for their kit. But even here, open source continues to demolish the barriers....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Straws in the Wind

Alongside all the high-profile wins for free software, there are what might be called guerilla gains happening in the background – small conceptual victories that point to greater things. Here's two....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Another Pebble on the Open Driver Cairn

I've written elsewhere about the signs that things are finally moving on the open source drivers front. Here's one more pebble on the cairn:

VIA has released over 16,000 lines of code that provides a frame-buffer driver in the Linux kernel. This code is licensed under the GNU GPLv2 and appears to be crafted by VIA's Joseph Chan. Supported by this driver is VIA's Unichrome CLE266, K400, K800, PM800, CN700, CX700, K8M890, P4M890, P4M900, and VX800 IGPs. We're still pouring over the code, but it seems to be in pretty good shape and does support digital connections (and does seem to support HDMI already) -- in other words it appears to be further along then when the RadeonHD driver started out.

...


Kudos go out to VIA Technologies this morning for this code dump, but the work isn't over. They still have a lot of work left to do to mend relations with the Unichrome and OpenChrome projects and focusing upon 3D and video playback work, etc. However, this is a step forward in showing that VIA may actually come around this time and play ball with the open-source community.

(Via James Tyrrell.)

Is The Lack of Open Source Drivers Driving You Mad?

On Open Enterprise blog.

What Richard Stallman Wants for Christmas

Bruce Byfield has an interesting write-up of the FSF's High Priority Free Software Projects.

Projects make this list "because there is no adequate free placement," the list's home page explains, which means that "users are continually being seduced into using non-free software."

He concludes with the just observation:

Personally, I find the current list both encouraging and depressing. On the one hand, it is encouraging in that relatively few items affect daily computing for the average user. Moreover, the fact that free software is in reasonable enough shape that it can start thinking beyond immediate needs and worry about such things as the BIOS is a sign of progress.

On the other hand, it is discouraging because progress sometimes seems slow. Video drivers have been a problem for years, and the improvements, while real, are also painfully slow. Similarly, Gnash has not yet developed to the stage where it can rival Adobe's Flash reader, despite several years of work.

Still, over time, the list reflects progress. For instance, since Sun announced last year that it was releasing the Java code, you will no longer find support for free Java implementations listed. By comparing the current list with previous ones, you can get a sense of the gradual evolution of free software, seeing where it's been and where it is heading. For a GNU/Linux watcher, it remains an invaluable resource.

Delving into the Dingly Dell

Interviews are a great way to get the background to important areas, but too often they concentrate on the big names (and I'm guiltier than most). So it's refreshing to come across somebody unknown but with an interesting perspective on things - in this case, Dell's embrace of GNU/Linux for ordinary users, seen through eyes of John Hull, manager of the Linux Engineering team there:

Ubuntu is already a great Linux distribution, so we try to only make changes where we can add value. Our primary focus is to get all necessary hardware support and bug fixes into the distribution itself, so that we don't have to make any changes to the shipping code. For those important bugs or hardware support that don't make the distribution, we'll make modifications to the factory-installed image as necessary. We add driver packages and scripts on top of the standard operating system to make sure our the customer experience is as nice as possible. Up to this point we have tried to minimize the changes we have made.