Message-ID: <3FBC47C1.6040209@cyberone.com.au>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 15:49:05 +1100
From: Nick Piggin <piggin@cyberone.com.au>
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To: Neil Brown <neilb@cse.unsw.edu.au>
CC: William Lee Irwin III <wli@holomorphy.com>,
       Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>, jt@hpl.hp.com,
       Linux kernel mailing list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       Pontus Fuchs <pof@users.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: Announce: ndiswrapper
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Neil Brown wrote:

>On Thursday November 20, piggin@cyberone.com.au wrote:
>
>>You have to admit its good for end users though. And indirectly, what
>>is good for them is good for us. Take the nvidia example: end users get
>>either a binary driver or nothing. If we were somehow able to stop
>>nvidia from distributing their binary driver, they would say "OK".
>>
>
>Is it good for end users?  It allows them to buy a computer with an
>nvidia graphics controller because "NVidia supply drivers", and then
>discover that support is only as good as NVidia are willing to make
>it.  I'm still waiting for some sort of power management support for
>the nvidia controller in my notebook.  If the driver and the specs
>were open, I could possibly do it myself.  On the other hand if there
>were no NVidia drivers, I never would have made the (arguable) mistake
>of buying this notebook.
>

I'm all for open specs, but in reality that doesn't always happen.
(out of interest, are there any OS 3d drivers for any current cards?)

I know what you mean, but I would find nvidia more at fault for not
providing power management than no OS drivers.

>
>Ofcourse we cannot and should not stop people from providing the
>option of binary only drivers, but I'm not convinced that we should
>acknowlege that people who provide binary-only drivers are doing a
>useful service for anyone but themselves.
>

No I wouldn't say that, I meant the Linux Kernel is doing the end users
a favour by allowing binary modules.


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