Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2006 13:32:22 -0800 (PST)
From: "Randy.Dunlap" <rdunlap@xenotime.net>
To: Tim Tassonis <timtas@cubic.ch>
cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [future of drivers?] a proposal for binary drivers.
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References: <440F4C80.6070907@cubic.ch>
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On Wed, 8 Mar 2006, Tim Tassonis wrote:

>  >
>  > if there was binary allowed (with any license) maybe dlink themself
>  > would build a driver, make documentation and provide it on CD, just
>  > see how much effort would be saved and in end he would get more time
>  > to treat his patients.
>  >
>
> Apart from all the other good arguments already posted:
>
> Are you really sure they will? Maybe dlink will, but I can tell from
> personal expierience (whine, whine) that the majority of vendors still
> won't release drivers. For the simple reason because they regard Linux a
> market too small to support. That is the main reason for most of them,
> not the license stuff.

Right, what we really need IMO is specs and the right to produce
GPL drivers from the specs.  Very little real work is required from the
vendors aside from IP/legal.

> Before Linux, I was an OS/2 user and although every vendor in the world
> was allowed to provide OS/2 drivers, there were more or less the same
> amount of vendor contributed drivers as there are now in Linux.
>
> I'm 100% sure that Linux supports more hardware than OS/2 did back then
> and the user base (Desktop wise) was at least as big as Linux.
>
> OS/2 died exactly because software companies didn't write closed-source
> software, hardware companies didn't write closed-source drivers, and IBM
> couldn't write it all themselves.
>
> So why repeat this desaster?
> Tim

-- 
~Randy
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