> He might *actually* be telling the truth. Maybe not all NDAs are > conspiracies against us, but are just marketers trying to keep things > quiet, and beyond that the companies don't care. That code might > actually be readable! > --then again it might not. We'll see.
As an optimist, I tend to agree with you. He hasn't really started something new - he's really just making it public knowledge with an open letter to hardware makers how FOSS drivers get made. A lot of shops must avoid the FOSS world because they don't want to take on another platform for support, no knowing that the community will. Realistically, while a company may require an NDA while they want to keep things secret, I expect having an unobfuscated driver out there will negate any need to enforce it longer than necessitated by marketing departments. I also expect that any drivers written in this manner will be discluded from the mainline linux kernel tree unless they are absolutely clearly written to a degree that the top deciders in Linux will accept it regardless of NDAs. Manufacturers who continue to be troublesome will see their drivers go away or require more work at least for users. If I can choose between two SCSI cards in Linux where one is supported by generic kernels, but the other requires either binary blobs or firmware loaders, or patching my own kernel with their code, I'll pick the easy one hands down. I think manufacturers will see that. > Also, please educate me: couldn't a BSD driver be created by using the > cleanroom approach? One person reads the GPL code, writes specs, > another implements them? Or is this covered when people say "reverse > engineer"? I imagine that's the best case scenario here, but that certainly does make things harder and everyone's a little more likely to lose something in translation. It's one of those situations where it *can* work, but no one wants to do it that way. It's not as bad as reverse engineering without a working model, but it is still reverse engineering because you're building your own specifications based on something that isn't the specifications. -- Regards, Neil Schelly Senior Systems Administrator W: 978-667-5115 x213 M: 508-410-4776 OASIS Open http://www.oasis-open.org "Advancing E-Business Standards Since 1993"
