On Tue, 24 Jan 2006, Hemmann, Volker Armin wrote:
On Tuesday 24 January 2006 02:43, Bill Unruh wrote:
On Tue, 24 Jan 2006, Hemmann, Volker Armin wrote:
On Tuesday 24 January 2006 02:15, Sergei Steshenko wrote:
"
The Linux developers DO NOT WANT to make it possible to write closed
source drivers. Many consider it a violation of the GPL.
"
- GPL allows to run commercial closed source programs under a
GPL'ed OS. That is, it doesn't prohibit this.
no, but it prohibits you from incorporating gpl'ed code into closed
source programms.
...
Likewise, closed source drivers can be implemented as separate
processes not linked to GPL kernel an thus not violating GPL.
so why has no one done it so far?
The userland ABI and API has been stable the last ten years.
You can take a binary, compiled on a computer using kernel 2.0.X and run
it on 2.6.X
You may need some glibc-wrapper, but that is not the kernels fault.
So if you want to implement a driver that is completly independent from
the kernel, lives in userspace, does not use GPL code in any form and is
closed source, do it. Noone will hinder you in doing that.
But if you are using GPL-code, you have to open it.
??? Noone is talking about a driver using GPL code. The question is how one
can have drivers which talk directly to the hardware and link into the
kernel. The code inside the driver need not use any GPL code.
oh, and suddenly you want to link into the kernel?
Again the code inside the driver module need not use any GPL code. Do we agree
on
that?
I thought, we were talking about userspace?
No, I am talking about a module. What is it about the relation of the
module to the kernel that you call that "linking" while the relation of
"userspace" program which also interacts with the kernel is not "linking"
And what is it about the "linking" that makes it not OK wrt the GPL.
btw, X11 was able to talk to hardware without any kernel-drivers.
But it has to talk via the video card drivers which are kernel drivers I
would assume.
the sense of reality says them, that it is stupid to have fix internal
api&abis, because they get into the way of efficient bug fixing and
development.
They also introduce bugs.
and they fix them.
Different ones.
Every piece of software has bugs.
That is not a license for bad design. "Oh well, bugs will always be with
us, so we do not need to do anything to make them rarer."
Some yoears ago, there was a nice article in Scientific America, about bugs in
software.
They used a mathematical proof to show, that it is not possible to write
bugfree non-trivial software.
And because of bugs, it is important to fix them.
And to design things so that bugs occur less frequently. Fixing bugs should
always play a distant second to proper design to make bugs unlikely.
What do you do, when you find a bug in the 'holy' internal abi, that should
not change?
Add one wrapper after the other?
I agree. That is a problem. But usually it is not the abi spec that is the
bug, but some implimentation.
There is a tradeoff. But as someone ignorant of driver development, surely
it is possible to design the system so that one both has stability and
flexibility.
You can see the unholy mess of drivers, when you try and install windows.
I am glad, that linux is much more userfriendly.
New graphic-card? I did not have to change anything or have to change one(!)
line in xorg.conf.
Ageed. you claim that the only way to accomplish this is to have an
unstable API/ABI?
New sound-card? make modules modules_install and modprobe the drivers. No
reboot, nothing.
New mainboard? The old kernel boots perfectly, but sadly I need a different
network driver. No problem. Make the module, modprobe it.
That is easy.
Agreed that is a great feature of Linux.
But surely the current method is not the only way of achieving this
objective.
It comes at the cost of
OK,new kernel, oops, my driver no longer works. Load in the source code and
config for the kernel, get the source for the driver, and recompile the
module. What, you discovered you had to change one thing in the config of
the kernel-- oh, go ahead and recompile all your modules.
Why is it not possible to compile a module once for 2.6 kernels, and then
forget about it. Update the kernel? fine, just reuse the same module.
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