Return-path: Received: from thunk.org ([69.25.196.29]:54625 "EHLO thunker.thunk.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751935Ab0KUNDD (ORCPT ); Sun, 21 Nov 2010 08:03:03 -0500 Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2010 08:02:36 -0500 From: Ted Ts'o To: "Luis R. Rodriguez" Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-wireless , Greg KH , David Miller , "John W. Linville" , Stephen Hemminger , "Perez-Gonzalez, Inaky" , Charles Marker , Jouni Malinen , Kevin Hayes , Zhifeng Cai , Don Breslin , Doug Dahlby , Julia Lawall Subject: Re: Challenges with doing hardware bring up with Linux first Message-ID: <20101121130236.GE23423@thunk.org> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 08:46:11AM -0800, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote: > > What this provides for is a wonderful leverage for hardware > > vendors. ? If they provide GPL'ed code for their core hardware > > drivers that link against the Linux 802.11 layer, at one fell > > swoop they also get Windows 7 and Mac OS X drivers for free! > > Yes, indeed ! That would be ideal indeed, but we'd need then an 802.11 > stack which is also permissive licensed and then make APIs for that > 802.11 stack to match mac80211's or cfg80211's or bridges between > then. Because ultimately you will still need some 802.11 stack for > some OSes that don't have one. I wonder how much this is true. Yes, at the moment we still need to worry about those OS's that don't have one; but how much longer will hardware vendors need to support Windows XP? If Linux, Windows 7, and Mac OS X all have an 802.11 stack, what other OS's do the hardware vendors need to support? - Ted