"The FSF today launched a campaign with a twofold mission of exposing the harms inflicted on computer users by the new Microsoft Windows Vista and promoting free software alternatives that respect users' security and privacy rights. "Vista is an upsell masquerading as an upgrade. It is an overall regression when you look at the most important aspect of owning and using a computer: your control over what it does. Obviously MS Windows is already proprietary and very restrictive, and well worth rejecting. But the new 'features' in Vista are a Trojan Horse to smuggle in even more restrictions. We'll be focusing attention on detailing how they work, how to resist them, and why people should care", said FSF program administrator John Sullivan."
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Member since:2006-04-21
Already have, I wish I could find the email, but I sent it off, and he told me that there is no plan to support the chipset either now or in the future - nice to see that FreeBSD love and support in action
And what was hte reason for that? Was it because the manufacturer won't release the specs? In which I am sure the FBSD developers told you it would be best if you bugged the manufacturer instead.
Its not just about feature requests; I can accept there will be waiting for features, but for bug fixes, and issues! please, the issue should get fixed straight away, otherwise I might as well simply wait on the telephone cue with Microsoft, pay $50 and file a bug report, which atleast I'll know will get fixed sometime rather than not at all, in the case of opensource!
I suspect you will find that more and better and faster bug fixing is done in the FOSS community than anywhere else, and certainly not at $50 per phone call.
Someone somewhere mentioned that Linux users continually promote Linux as the best software evah, and diss MS.
The fact is, that even if MS didn't do the reverse, I have tried everything else and I think, for reasons which aren't always to do with Linux' quality, that given the combination of openness, speed, flexibility, stability and features it offers, it certainly is. Windows doesn't offer that combination, and most other OSes are much farther behind. The BSDs lie somewhere in between, but it would be nice if someone would come up with a new paradigm.
SymphonyOS (mentioned here on OSnews recently) looks nice but failed to run on my machine, for example. added to the fact that it has, of course, linux underpinnings beneath that desktop.
Hell, most "alternative OSes" just use the single-root-hierarchical-directory-structure-and-lowercase-filename strategy of UNIX. How's about a proper AS/400-style database filesystem, for example? Or an OS with automatically memory-mapped files and properly-implemented segments, a la Multics? Or bringing back "media autosensing" a la AmigaOS, so that a volume icon appears when you insert a disk, the disk is automatically mounted, and when you eject it it is automatically unmounted and the icon disappears. Put all of those under a SymphonyOS- or NextStep-style desktop and you'd have a winner, IMO.
Member since:2005-07-06
And what was hte reason for that? Was it because the manufacturer won't release the specs? In which I am sure the FBSD developers told you it would be best if you bugged the manufacturer instead.
Christ all bloody mighty, you really *do* have a comprehension problem; the driver exists on OpenBSD, it is just a matter of porting the wpi driver from OpenBSD to FreeBSD!
The issue isn't technical or legal, its simply the "I can't be bothered' mantra that FreeBSD has adopted; the same mantra that OpenSolaris has adopted when it comes to writing drivers or fixing up their decrapit sound system, PCMCIA infrastructure.
Member since:
2005-07-06
As for FreeBSD, why don't you pester the developers to do it?
Already have, I wish I could find the email, but I sent it off, and he told me that there is no plan to support the chipset either now or in the future - nice to see that FreeBSD love and support in action <rolls eyes>
Probably because you think FOSS developers are as unresponsive to user requests as proprietary developers. That isn't the case in my experience.
Its not just about feature requests; I can accept there will be waiting for features, but for bug fixes, and issues! please, the issue should get fixed straight away, otherwise I might as well simply wait on the telephone cue with Microsoft, pay $50 and file a bug report, which atleast I'll know will get fixed sometime rather than not at all, in the case of opensource!