From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262052AbVAJCQ1 (ORCPT ); Sun, 9 Jan 2005 21:16:27 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262053AbVAJCQ1 (ORCPT ); Sun, 9 Jan 2005 21:16:27 -0500 Received: from rwcrmhc12.comcast.net ([216.148.227.85]:6596 "EHLO rwcrmhc12.comcast.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262052AbVAJCQU (ORCPT ); Sun, 9 Jan 2005 21:16:20 -0500 Message-ID: <41E1E57A.7060902@comcast.net> Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2005 21:16:26 -0500 From: John Richard Moser User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0 (X11/20041211) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Dave Airlie CC: Alan Cox , znmeb@cesmail.net, Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: starting with 2.7 References: <1697129508.20050102210332@dns.toxicfilms.tv> <41DD9968.7070004@comcast.net> <1105045853.17176.273.camel@localhost.localdomain> <1105115671.12371.38.camel@DreamGate> <41DEC5F1.9070205@comcast.net> <1105237910.11255.92.camel@DreamGate> <41E0A032.5050106@comcast.net> <1105278618.12054.37.camel@localhost.localdomain> <41E1CCB7.4030302@comcast.net> <21d7e99705010917281c6634b8@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <21d7e99705010917281c6634b8@mail.gmail.com> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.89.5.0 X-Enigmail-Supports: pgp-inline, pgp-mime Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Dave Airlie wrote: |>And what 3rd party hardware vendor wants to waste their resources by |>repeting smaller versions of the one-time cost of driver writing over |>and over to accomodate linux, when they can't even accomodate all |>versions due to special patches some people have? So far there's been a |>rediculous but visible trend of hardware vendors to hold their source |>closed. | | | I do wonder would open source kernel drivers to work with a closed | source user space application be accepted into the mainline kernel... | say for example Nvidia or VMware GPL'ed their lower layer kernel | interfaces but kept their userspace (X driver and VMware) closed | source which is perfectly acceptable from a license point of view.. | would Linus/Andrew accept the nvidia lowlevel into the kernel, if not | then it would be idealogical not licensing issues which would make the | argument for having a stable module interface better :-) | | It would be interesting to find out .. and you are right there is | little point in arguing this at this stage, closed source drivers are | evil. | I believe closed source drivers are an acceptable evil for two cases: - - We do not have an open source alteranive yet, and so we need one to use while that's being developed - - The hardware is obscure and nobody cares enough to write a driver anyway open source drivers are better becaus I can just recompile them for new hardware. Get a PPC? Have a USB cam? Rebuild the kernel for PPC with OSS drivers. Can't do that with binaries. Can't security audit the source code of binaries either. :) | Dave. | - -- All content of all messages exchanged herein are left in the Public Domain, unless otherwise explicitly stated. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFB4eV5hDd4aOud5P8RAnZoAJ9sVMoZTK1HW0RmRtA/OGdmphYTLQCeNtNO +UvNm8WfPeUj1h90nkAjlZo= =65kw -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----