Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932847AbWLNQHI (ORCPT ); Thu, 14 Dec 2006 11:07:08 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932846AbWLNQHI (ORCPT ); Thu, 14 Dec 2006 11:07:08 -0500 Received: from zcars04f.nortel.com ([47.129.242.57]:58037 "EHLO zcars04f.nortel.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932847AbWLNQHF (ORCPT ); Thu, 14 Dec 2006 11:07:05 -0500 X-Greylist: delayed 1381 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Thu, 14 Dec 2006 11:07:05 EST Message-ID: <458170FF.9030801@nortel.com> Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2006 09:42:55 -0600 From: "Chris Friesen" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.7) Gecko/20050427 Red Hat/1.7.7-1.1.3.4 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Rik van Riel CC: Greg KH , Jonathan Corbet , Andrew Morton , Martin Bligh , "Michael K. Edwards" , Linus Torvalds , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: GPL only modules [was Re: [GIT PATCH] more Driver core patches for 2.6.19] References: <20061214003246.GA12162@suse.de> <22299.1166057009@lwn.net> <20061214005532.GA12790@suse.de> <20061214051015.GA3506@nostromo.devel.redhat.com> <20061214084820.GA29311@suse.de> <4581595C.7080508@redhat.com> In-Reply-To: <4581595C.7080508@redhat.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 14 Dec 2006 15:43:11.0406 (UTC) FILETIME=[8F5BC4E0:01C71F96] Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1132 Lines: 28 Rik van Riel wrote: > Why would users buy a piece of hardware that needs a binary > only driver that's unsupportable, when they can buy a similar > piece of hardware that has a driver that's upstream and is > supported by every single Linux distribution out there? In my experience it falls into a number of categories: 1) The system that requires the binary driver has other hardware on it that is required for the app. 2) The system that requires the binary driver costs significantly less, enough that they decide to bite the bullet on the software support side. 3) The system that requires the binary driver is the *only* one available in the specified form factor with the specified cpu architecture. 4) The team that decides on the hardware is totally divorced from the OS guys, so they don't know/care what is supported by open source drivers in the first place. Chris - 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/