ndiswrapper

[D. Joe Anderson]

On Sun, Oct 31, 2004 at 10:30:01AM -0500, Jonathan Hutchins wrote:
> The point is that you do have a choice, and you should exercise that choice by 
> supporting hardware that is supported by and that supports "FOSS".

No, the point is that choice often isn't that black-and-white. 

When, in the limit, choice does reduce to the simple case you
outline, where the only consideration is which wireless device
to buy, I agree with you: One should support that kind of
hardware.  

But oftentimes hardware purchase decisions are an aggregation of
several other factors which are weighed against each other, and
purchase of non-supported hardware happens as a
byproduct--consider the wide variety of non-supported or
poorly-supported winmodems that are bundled, without option, on
laptops these days, almost without much choice.

We buy those, perhaps, in spite of the modems in them.  I'd be
fain to reject a laptop that had a non-supported winmodem, which
I would probably little use even were it supported, if every
other feature of the system were perfectly aligned with my
preferences, including support for/from free software.

Or, sometimes, the purchase is a fait accompli, and the only
challenge (for instance, in an installfest scenario) is, given
the hardware, get as much free software running on it as
possible.

So, in that light, the availability of ndiswrappers, though not
ideologically pristine, can be a net gain for freedom.

-- 
Joe