Writing a Linux Device Driver on Company Time?

DriverSubversion asks: "Excuse the anonymity: I'm covering my back and that of my company. My company makes some USB and PCI peripherals, currently only supported under Windows. Several of us have pointed out that there is a large cross-over between the people who buy these things and the people who run linux - and thus it's in the company's best interest to develop device drivers for Linux,as well as Windows. Now while our boss is kind of convinced that this might sell some more units, he understandably wants to know how much it will cost to write and maintain the drivers... and where better to ask than here? So has anyone else gone though this? On scale of 1-10, how hard is it, (1 being 'extremely easy, 2 programmers could do it' and 10 is 'a team of no less than 20 programmers, lawyers and salesmen'). Keep in mind that our intent is to keep the code up-to-date, GPL-compliant and in at least some major distributions."

Comments

I have no idea

[CableModemSniper]

But I want some shiny new drivers, so I'll say its a 1.

USB drivers are pretty easy

[n1ywb]

For part of my college senior project I developed a linux USB device driver. It wasn't too bad, working on it part time I went from nothing to something that I could probably release in about two weeks. It was the first real linux device driver or USB project I had ever worked on. Of course I kick ass daily.

On a scale of 1 to 10.

[D.A. Zollinger]

Your complex question requires a complex answer. I would say Pi.