As many of you know, the use of proprietary graphics drivers in Linux distributions is a stain in the lofty goals of software freedom. Still, most of us take the pragmatic choice of living with them, rationalising our decision the best we can; after all, the free software alternatives (particularly in the case of the nVidia boards) are severely lacking.

There's some heart-warming news on this front; PledgeBank has been running a pledge started by David Nielsen, where anyone can commit themselves to the following: "I will pledge at least $10 USD towards the development of the open source nouveau driver for the nvidia card series but only if 1,000 other people will do the same". After some initial confusion on whether this was the real deal, it seems that the Nouveau people (the guys working on the implementation of an open source version of the nVidia drivers) are actually supporting this. The good news is that the pledge objectives have already been reached: as I am writing this, 1333 people have committed themselves (yours truly being one of them).

Now, the Nouveau people would have continued their work with or without the pledge. Nevertheless, this shows a) that people don't mind paying to support the ideals of free software; b) that many of us are not happy with the state of affairs concerning the use of proprietary drivers. Will 2007 be the year when the free software community confronts this skeleton in the closet heads on? Let us hope so.