Adrian Bunk wrote: >I see at least two disadvantages: > >First, it doesn't encourage hardware manufacturers to support open >source development. > >Linux has only a small market share, but it's slowly growing. > >Linux driver support does sometimes influence the decision which >hardware to buy. > >With NdisWrapper, the hardware manufacturer can say: > "Our hardware is supported through the open source NdisWrapper." > >Without NdisWrapper, they will sometimes hear that people did choose to >buy hardware from a different hardware manufacturer that has a Linux >driver. This can make the hardware manufacturer more friendly towards >open source development (e.g. by providing hardware specs). > >Secondly, binary-only drivers have an impact on the stability of the >Linux kernel. > >E.g. during the last years the nvidia has produced relatively many >kernel crashes - and I doubt that binary-only drivers for Windows are >much better in this respect. > >The users only see their kernel crashing blaming the Linux kernel and >harming the reputation of the stability of Linux. > >
Third, both ndiswrapper and binary-only drivers only work on one platform. E.g. broadcom has a binary-only driver for their WLAN card on Linux, but only for mipsel (wrt54g). On Alpha or PowerPC, most WLAN equipment doesn't work under Linux, at all. Jochen - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
