On 2/13/07, chefren <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 2/13/07 7:15 PM, Andreas Bihlmaier wrote:
> I were the hulk, everything would have went green.
Why? If people want to use blobs or write copyrighted code or GPL
code, let them do so. Free world...
> Seriously WTF are those guys thinking? Nothing?
> There is no use to binary source drivers, they are not free/usable,
They believe they can use them, and they obviously some kind of work.
It's about quality, philosophy and so on if you think things should be
free, others have an other opinion, let them.
So many times it's been said and yet people still don't grasp the big picture.
If the work being done here didn't impact anyone other than the GPL
driver writing Linux crew, it would be one thing.
When the message sent to commercial hardware manufacturers is "we
don't want your specifications to be open, we just want to work under
NDA so we can produce a single driver" by one open source guy, the
message is received by said vendor is different. What it tells them is
that not releasing open documentation and specifications is the norm,
they don't have to disclose anything to the open source community
outside of NDA, and that helping produce a GPL driver is good enough.
The next step is them thinking that they can just produce said driver
themselves. And then that they can just release a blob.
In other words, it undermines the (better) efforts of a project like
OpenBSD who try to get fully open docs and specs so that OpenBSD can
have a functioning driver, FreeBSD can have one, NetBSD can have one,
Linux can have one... etc.
Instead we end up with a GPL driver that has to be reverse engineered
and we end up with the same problems we already have.
It's not enough to be "good enough". If the damn community can't get
this by now, it's going to continue to be an uphill battle.
DS
