Re: If you really want Free firmware...
[Please Note that I'm not trying to create a hardware holy war. Of
all the OSes I have used and upon all the architectures I have built -
both commercial and non-commercial -- Debian has consistently
delivered a great wholistic, as well as holistic, system solution.]
On 14 Dec 2004 09:03:20 -0500, Michael Poole <mdpoole@troilus.org> wrote:
> Hardware design has very different and higher third-party costs than
> software design, and the cost to make and test minor revisions can be
> a significant fraction of the cost to do the initial build. As long
> as that is true, free hardware is not possible on the same scale as
> free software or with many of its benefits.
Those costs exist mainly, IMHO, because the general public doesn't
have wide spread manufacturing like Linux developers do with regard to
software development.
Personally I'm not buying it. Hardware costs what it does for the
same reasons as software -- to advance the state of the art and to
create better hardware (or software as the case may be.)
Long ago someone said software would be cheaper to make if there was
only one hardware platform to design for. Again, a non-relevant
example would be IBM and the PC market -- why are there so many
clones?
If hardware manufacturers would stop creating 50 types of hardware -
software development would cost nothing, right :-)
As an aside to actual hardware -- I'm using (and chose) Debian for
PowerPC and Ultrasparc, btw; not that it matters. But I will assure
Debian that if support for PowerPC and/or Ultrasparc declines and I
cannot use a platform of choice I can without hesitation choose
soemthing other than Debian.
Not that my one voice matters. Most of my *paying* clients, if not
all of them use SuSE or Redhat -- they have lots of trouble too (most
of them choose an OS other than Debian and then call me when there's
an emergency) but thats another story and thread topic all together.
Those clients that use Debian get help from me just about for free --
Debian, over all, is that good.
--
WC -Sx- Jones
http://insecurity.org/
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