Unnecessary FUD about proprietary drivers
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Jockey |
Fix Released
|
Low
|
Martin Pitt |
Bug Description
"Proprietary drivers do not have public source code that %(os)s developers are free to modify. They represent a risk to you because they are only available on the types of computer chosen by the manufacturer, and security updates to them depend solely on the responsiveness of the manufacturer. %(os)s cannot fix or improve these drivers."
I guess my primary concern is the phrase "they represent a risk to you". In most cases, there's no "risk" at all. In fact, the manufacturer's drivers will typically work much better than the open source ones.
Also, "they are only available on the types of computer chosen by the manufacturer" is irrelevant. If Jockey is offering a driver to you, then it's obviously available on the computer that you're using.
To a computing novice, this description is unnecessarily scary and might mislead people into avoiding the better drivers for no legitimate reason.
Also, would it be possible to insert the manufacturer's name? Then it would say something like "depend solely on the responsiveness of NVIDIA Corporation", which would help the user make the connection to the manufacturer, and point them in the direction they should go for help.
"If you have trouble with these drivers, you should contact Samsung Electronics for support".
Fixed upstream in r552.
The manufacturer's name cannot really be added there, since (1) it's not obvious how to get it, and (2) there might be several drivers in the list, such as "nvidia" and "broadcom".