<div>On 8/10/06, Max Spevack <<a href="mailto:mspevack@redhat.com">mspevack@redhat.com</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> So there is a balance to be struck -- on one side you have the desire to not make concessions to proprietary software vendors, but on the other side you have the very real problem of unnecessarily breaking the systems of users.</blockquote><div> I think this is a loaded way of framing the decision. It's nothing to do with a "desire not to make concessions to proprietary software vendors". From my point of view - on the one side you have the desire to provide an incremental improvement to the experience of Free Software users and on the other is the desire to not scare away users of non-Free Software. This decision places the convenience of users of non-proprietary hardware and software lower than the convenience of people that bought hardware that (everyone should know) is not and cannot be supported by a Free operating system. If the rumours of ATI and nVidia being unable to open their drivers because of the threat of patent infringement lawsuits is true then we're going to experience this situation again in the future and this decision will set a precedent for holding back Free software users in order to keep non-Free users happy. That seems like an inversion of priorities. Best wishes, Oisin Feeley </div></div>