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Subject: Re: Why is Nvidia given GPL'd code to use in non-free drivers?
From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To: hps@intermeta.de
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On Sun, 2003-01-05 at 21:17, Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:
> Most of the open source software works "about so". Do we have a bullet
> proof USB stack? WLAN drivers? DHCP code? ACPI? APM (which is about
> what? eight years old?)?

USB is getting there, but its certainly better than some others
WLAN yes - openap is superb stuff
DHCP - yes
ACPI - very recently become a truely open project so will I hope now
improve
APM - reliable for years, bios code (the nonfree bit) often very buggy

> If you find a well designed and completely specified and developed
> piece of open source software, you're almost sure to find a company or
> an individual having been paid for developing it and the putting it
> into open source.

I don't think its that clear. We have some extremely classy code done
for fun, or because people had the hardware, and some horrible code
people were paid to write.

Good code is about good engineers, and good engineers do things for many
different reasons and motivations. 

Alan

-- 
Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>