I'm been perplexed by the recent fracas around the possibility of Ubuntu shipping non-free drivers by default as part of the feisty release goal to bring the bling. The issue has been discussed by many people, most recently and eloquently in a blog post by Scott James Remnant.
I have never been 100% comfortable with our (Ubuntu's) decision to ship proprietary drivers. The Ubuntu philosophy document -- which Mark Shuttleworth and I drafted originally -- says quite unambiguously:
Every computer user should have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, share, change and improve their software for any purpose, without paying licensing fees.
I believe this deeply. Consequently, I feel that binary drivers in Ubuntu are, and always have been, a failure to live up to our principles. If our philosophy document is still representative, most people in our community should be a little uncomfortable with them -- even if they think, as most of us do, that shipping them is the correct thing to do.
Early on Ubuntu decided that binary firmware and hardware drivers would be distributed and quasi-supported in restricted. While not completely comfortable with the move, I could understand and defend it for three reasons:
- The drivers were easily removable and not enabled by default unless necessary to achieve functioning hardware.
- As part of this process, we promised to work with vendors to accelerate the freeing/open-sourcing of their drivers.
- Perhaps most importantly, I couldn't imagine not using them if it were the choice between non-free drivers or inoperable hardware.
The proposal to include proprietary nVidia driver in place of the existing free nVidia driver is important because it changes, or eliminates, the first and third justifications. Since the first issue has been discussed in depth, it seem appropriate to focus on the third and final point. The point is perhaps best introduced with an observation:
While I have met many people who research and buy hardware to avoid the need for non-free drivers, something I do myself, I have never met anyone who voluntarily chooses inoperable hardware on a computer they use over working hardware through a non-free driver.
While not airtight, this observation is precisely why the old policy of using non-free drivers only when no free drivers exist works so well. By effectively synonymizing use of the non-free driver with use of the hardware, the crisis created by non-free drivers is rendered paradoxical: anybody using a piece of hardware that only works with non-free drivers is, by definition, either using non-free drivers or not using the hardware. The only way to not use non-free drivers in situations where no free drivers exist is to not use hardware that requires them. If you use different hardware, you will not need to use non-free drivers. This important justification is completely inapplicable to the proposal to include non-free drivers in place of free (but not perfect) alternatives.
Second, while shipping non-free drivers is wrong because we lose our freedom and violate our philosophy, the desire for basic hardware support is universal and important enough that it's defensible. One reason that the "binary by default for bling" situation alarms me is that I don't believe that the desire for desktop bling is as universal, or as strong, as the desire for working hardware.
An analogy might be stealing food to feed your family and stealing a CD from the record store. Both are wrong because stealing is wrong, but I have a lot more sympathy for the hungry thief in the first example because CDs are not as necessary as food and because many people would rather go without a new CD than steal. We can ask: "Which is worse: selling your soul for a decent job or selling your soul for a PS3?" In an absolute sense, neither is worse; but it's easier to support the former than the latter. I'm very impressed with Beryl -- but I have trouble empathizing strongly with the need for a spinning desktop cube.
New users may be impressed and attracted to an Ubuntu desktop powered by proprietary drivers. They might also be impressed by proprietary applications. However, it is self-defeating to attract new users to our free platform and principles by compromising our core values. Many users already make the decision to use non-free video drivers and Ubuntu makes it very easy to do so once they have made that choice. Installing binary drivers by default is choosing for the large number of users who will stick with any default. It may be a conservative stance but as long as we believe that a non-insignificant number of users would choose to live without bling before compromising Ubuntu's philosophy and goals, we should make the difficult decision to side with freedom by default.
When discussing this issue, many people say, it's not my decision or it isn't my call. Regardless of whether anyone agrees with me and regardless of who the final decision is up to -- and it's not clear to me now -- I believe that the Ubuntu community has the power to inform and shape the development of their distribution. As the Ubuntu community, we can make our position heard. The best place to do that right now seems to be the Accelerated X specification comments page. One can also email the the Technical Board (for technical comments) and the Community Council (for principle or philosophy related issues).
