Return-path: Received: from mail-qy0-f174.google.com ([209.85.216.174]:50979 "EHLO mail-qy0-f174.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755838Ab0KUVsO convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Sun, 21 Nov 2010 16:48:14 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <20101121214407.GH23423@thunk.org> References: <20101121130236.GE23423@thunk.org> <20101121172906.GD3703@kroah.com> <20101121203124.1ba8212e@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> <20101121214407.GH23423@thunk.org> From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?G=E1bor_Stefanik?= Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2010 22:47:53 +0100 Message-ID: Subject: Re: Challenges with doing hardware bring up with Linux first To: "Ted Ts'o" , Alan Cox , "Luis R. Rodriguez" , Greg KH , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-wireless , David Miller , "John W. Linville" , Stephen Hemminger , "Perez-Gonzalez, Inaky" , Charles Marker , Jouni Malinen , Kevin Hayes , Zhifeng Cai , Don Breslin , Doug Dahlby , Julia Lawall Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 10:44 PM, Ted Ts'o wrote: > On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 08:31:24PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote: >> >> Which we know in practice they won't. They'll sit on fixes (often >> security fixes) and tweak and add private copies of features. In turn the >> Linux one could then only keep up by adding features itself - which would >> have to be GPL to stop the same abuse continuing. >> >> It's a nice idea but the corporations exist to make money and adding >> proprietary custom stack add-ons is clearly a good move on their part to >> do that. > > Hence my recommendation that if someone is going to do the work to > create a 802.11 layer that has shims that work on multiple operating > systems, it be GPL with explicit exceptions to allow said layer to > work on legacy operating systems like QNX, et. al. ?That way it forces > the hardware specific code to be released under the GPL --- if they > want to take advantage of the "write onces, work on multiple operating > systems" feature. > > If someone is going to go through all of this work to make it possible > --- particularly if it's at a company such as Luis's employer, or any > other wifi chipset provider --- why should it allow their competitors > to do closed source drivers? ?Better to structure the driver licensing > such that (a) there is benefit for companies to make a Linux driver by > using this common stack, and (b) but in exchange, it forces them to > make a driver which is guaranteed to be usable by Linux by virtual of > the fact that (1) the native interface is Linux's wireless stack, and > (2) the license forces them to GPL their driver. By forcing the driver to be GPL, you automatically exclude Windows from the list of platforms supported by such a cross-OS driver, as the Windows NDIS headers are AFAIK under a GPL-incompatible license, so no GPL driver can be written for Windows. > > ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? - Ted > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at ?http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > -- Vista: [V]iruses, [I]ntruders, [S]pyware, [T]rojans and [A]dware. :-)