On Fri, 26 Jan 2001, faisal wrote:
> so many peoples have problems with winmodem in linux
> i wonder why they dont dont make drivers for them ?
> is it that hard ?
It's very hard because most of the companies making winmodems refuse to
release any info about them, largely because they're worried about people
stealing their intellectual property - in a winmodem the software driver
is the major part of the IP, the actual hardware is more or less a glorified
sound card. And without the code or at the least some open specs for the
software driver, it's a *very* difficult task to write your own version
for Linux, it's actually almost impossible to successfully code a driver
that will allow the hardware to function as a modem. On the other hand, a
number of winmodem companies have released closed drivers for their
winmodems that will work with Linux to some extent. Check
<http://www.linmodems.org> for details on what's being done with winmodems
under Linux. Lucent winmodems have the best support presently, they've
recently isolated the functions they don't want people looking at in the
driver enough so that their driver should work with pretty much any
version of Linux above 2.2.x up to 2.4.x. Other companies have working
drivers for the 2.2.12 - 2.2.17 kernels or so. But it's extremely unlikely
that there'll be support for winmodems in the kernel anytime soon, because
the winmodem companies don't want to completely open source their
drivers. Personally I think that Mandrake is doing the best job they can
by pointing people towards the closed source drivers if a winmodem is
detected during installation of 7.2 - it's simply not possible to include
open source drivers at the moment, and I don't think they should include
any closed source stuff.
