Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265249AbUD3UD7 (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Apr 2004 16:03:59 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265251AbUD3UD7 (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Apr 2004 16:03:59 -0400 Received: from 34.mufa.noln.chcgil24.dsl.att.net ([12.100.181.34]:63728 "EHLO tabby.cats.internal") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265249AbUD3UCl (ORCPT ); Fri, 30 Apr 2004 16:02:41 -0400 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="CP 1252" From: Jesse Pollard To: Timothy Miller , Peter Williams Subject: Re: [PATCH] Blacklist binary-only modules lying about their license Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 15:01:46 -0500 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.2] Cc: Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz , Marc Boucher , Sean Estabrooks , Linus Torvalds , Paul Wagland , Rik van Riel , koke@sindominio.net, Rusty Russell , lkml - Kernel Mailing List , David Gibson References: <4091D6D4.8070507@aurema.com> <40927A86.30207@techsource.com> In-Reply-To: <40927A86.30207@techsource.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <04043015014600.23067@tabby> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1813 Lines: 41 On Friday 30 April 2004 11:10, Timothy Miller wrote: > Peter Williams wrote: > >> "DriverLoader technology is the ideal Linux solution to support > >> devices for > >> which no adequate native open-source drivers are available. It also > >> allows > >> vendors to drastically reduce time to market or eliminate the need to > >> support > >> multiple drivers for Windows and Linux. By using the same driver on > >> both platforms, significant resources can be saved." > >> > >> Rusty was right. > > > > Why did you omit the next paragraph (which completes the story): > > > > "We have attempted to reduce the inconvenience of binary-only drivers by > > separating the proprietary code from the operating-system specific code. > > The latter is provided in source form, allowing users to install the > > drivers under any supported version (2.4 or later) of the Linux kernel." > > While it does allow for Linux to get certain kinds of drivers quicker, > it turns hardware developers into slackers who don't want to REALLY > support Linux and eats away at the spirit of Linux as an open system. > > What you're doing may short-term enhance hardware support for Linux, but > in the long term, it is a set-back for Linux because it does not > encourage hardware vendors to support Linux directly and even pushes > true Linux support further into the future. And worse - It hangs the users out to dry if the vendor drops support of the driver/hardware. With full source code the community or the user would be able to continue to update/fix the driver for new kernels. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/