:: Re: [Dng] straw poll, non-free firm…
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Author: Vince Mulhollon
Date:  
To: dng
Subject: Re: [Dng] straw poll, non-free firmware for installers
On Wed, Jun 3, 2015 at 12:06 PM, Laurent Bercot <ska-devel@???>
wrote:

> when the user buys such a piece of hardware
>


Just be careful, the assumption is the user is the installer is the buyer,
and frankly most of the machines I've installed in the last 20 years, that
has not been the case.

The old "heres a donor from the junk pile for The Experiment" that gets
linux and somehow worms its way into production, the old desktop at home
that turns into a LAN router or print server (in the old days before home
routers existed as hardware). Donor hardware in general, junk from ham
radio festivals, hand me downs...

I would wager that "many" linux installs end on hardware where the buyer
doesn't even know linux exists.

Especially in business environments where the buyer is some guy who got
sports team tickets for the big sale and he couldn't care less about the
suffering the installer is going thru, may never even meet the installer.
And the user often couldn't care less about the suffering of the installer
either.

I have hand built dedicated linux boxes from hardware I selected and paid
for that I use, which fits the user = installer = buyer, but off the top of
my head thats only 6 boxes in 20+ years out of dozens if not hundreds of
systems over that time?