This is a rough draft of an idea of an open letter to vendors - trying
to create a dialog for creating open source drivers for their
hardware.
It isnt ready (note the XXX?s!) - but I have to attend to other things
right now so I thought I might just put it out there for comments.
Rudolf
_________________________
On behalf of the Linux? community we would like to bring to your
attention that there currently does not exist any open source driver
for Linux? for your hardware XXX.
We would like to enter a dialog to clarify any concerns you might have
to why you currently does not provide such drivers and to possible
help resolve such issues.
We believe it might be beneficial to both you and the Linux? userbase
to provide the community with either specifications on how to
communicate with your hardware so the community can develop the
appropriate drivers or to let you develop such drivers in cooperation
with the community.
There are often several reasonings behind the lack of such drivers
from hardware vendors.
These might include fear of giving out information that could risk
intellectual property (IP) or lack of understanding of how open source
software and in particular Linux? are being developed and maintained.
It might be a licensing issue or a view that the Linux? userbase is to
small to have any impact on sales of a particular device.
First of all ? if there is no risk of loss of intellectual property ?
we believe that the following reasons might convince you to develop
open source drivers for Linux?:
An open source driver is actively maintained by the community itself ?
often resolving in bug-fixes sooner than their closed sourced
counterparts and reducing maintainance costs for companies.
It is often possible to modularize a driver so most of the same code
can be reused for drivers in other operating systems. This might
reduce development time for companies and thereby reduce costs.
Regarding intellectual property issues there are several ways to
develop open source drivers without loosing any control over
intellectual property. XXXXXX
Signed by:
Maintainer of subsystem XX
Maintainer of subsystem YY
Maintainer of subsystem ZZ
Maintainer of Linux ? (L. T!??)
--
Rudolf Randal - H?ssleholmsgatan 3B lgh 503 - 214 43 Malm? - Sweden -
Phone: +46 (0)76 234 05 77
On Iau, 2006-03-09 at 14:17 +0100, Rudolf Randal wrote:
> This is a rough draft of an idea of an open letter to vendors - trying
> to create a dialog for creating open source drivers for their
> hardware.
It never does any harm asking and poking people politely. However what
are you going to do if they reply "tell me more". It goes beyond an open
letter - you need a process too.