Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2007 17:27:07 -0500
To: Roland Dreier <rdreier@cisco.com>
Cc: Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Free Linux Driver Development!
Message-ID: <20070130222707.GG7584@csclub.uwaterloo.ca>
References: <20070130012904.GA9617@kroah.com> <ada8xfks90x.fsf@cisco.com> <20070130191020.GF20642@kroah.com> <adaodogqpmx.fsf@cisco.com> <20070130195445.GE22022@kroah.com> <adazm80p4qp.fsf@cisco.com>
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From: lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Lennart Sorensen)
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On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 01:46:38PM -0800, Roland Dreier wrote:
> I disagree -- Linux today gets drivers not just from volunteers
> writing drivers from specs, but also from vendors writing drivers and
> volunteers writing drivers via reverse engineering.  And many of those
> drivers don't work on every platform and aren't supported by
> enterprise distros.  And when the community loses interest, drivers
> are left to bitrot.

I would much rather see a driver bit rot due to lack of interest than
see hardware go to the scrap heap because the vendor stoped caring about
it and you are SOL.  Happens every time a new windows version comes out.
lots of working hardware suddenly becomes useless.  At least on linux I
can keep using it if I want to until I decide not to try and maintain
the driver (if no one else is doing it).  A driver with bitrot is a lot
better than no driver at all.

--
Len Sorensen
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