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Free/Open Source Software Hardware Requirements?
Bender asks: "Most on Slashdot seem to be concerned with getting Free/Open Source software to be compatible with hardware (firmware, register sets, etc). My question is from the other side of the table: I'm in the hardware business and I'm wondering if there are any central guidelines to better guarantee compatibility with Linux/*BSD. As an example, to guarantee that our hardware runs Microsoft Windows, we have to conform to the Windows Logo Program Requirements. These requirements dictate (among other things) firmware interfaces, debug ports, and DRM. Some of these requirements, if not implemented carefully, could trigger incompatibilities with non-Microsoft operating systems. Is there a Linux/*BSD equivalent to the Microsoft requirements to allow hardware designers to build OS agnostic systems?"
If you release complete documentation of said hardware ...
Well documented, unencumbered interfaces would be a nice start.
My ininformed, off-the-cuff answer would be:
Complete and freely available documentation.
If your product is really wanted, people will adapt (look at how hard people try to do this with things like reverse-engineered open-source drivers). If you freely provided complete documentation on your hardware, it would make it several orders of magnitude easier for developers to write software for your hardware.
... send a free piece of the hardware to every major kernel-programmer.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Conform to freely available published standards. If you have good reason to produce proprietary hardware, publish the programming interface in sufficient detail for people to make a clean-room implementation of drivers. And don't worry -- free drivers will follow.
The real key is to make documentation available to OS developers, preferably without an NDA. Pretty much everything else can be worked around--a lot of the main OS developers are pretty bright.
One other thing to consider is that there is a lot of 64-bit hardware running on free OSs. It's nice when PCI devices can DMA to the full address space.
The obvious solution is the Open Hardware Certification at http://www.open-hardware.org/
I always felt the term "Windows compatible hardware" was a big piece of bullshit. Shouldn't it be the software to conform to the hardware, and not the other way round? Hardware seems to be the lowest common denominator here.
Of course (as some posts already mentioned), this can only be achieved if the hardware in question is properly documented so that developers know how to write drivers for it, without having to resort to dirty (and sometimes illegal) tricks like reverse engineering.
Score: i, Imaginary
You said:
From the "MS Logo" link:
So is it really a question of ensuring that your hardware "works", or is it a marketing issue in which you need to show the colourful Windows flag on your product's packagaing?
I'll admit that I didn't devle too deep into that MS document, though, so it may encompass far more than the logo, despite what the title suggests.
So the *nix crowd has always been followers.
If the harware guys want to play OS here's the game plan:
1. exactly follow existing spes (where posable)
2. clearly and loudly publish interface details
3. release *Linux drivers with the hardware
[#3 is cheaper than you think!]
...then people will correct you if it's wrong. If you release open source drivers to the community and do it in a fashion which inspires feedback (mailing lists, forums, Sourceforge) and people find fault (bugs, standards compliance, bad code style) it can and likely will be fixed.
If you are prepared to put paid developers at the whim of the community then you are already on the right track to wide acceptance. You have to realize it isn't your baby anymore and if you've just released a horrible monster it will get tamed and put into other projects that have nothing to do with you.
Going open source is easy - anyone will tell you what is good and bad to do. Closed source, proprietary software tends to lean towards groupthink and suddenly a bad project is worse. There is no reason to keep discussions and ideas behind closed doors in the open source world so you can benefit from wider feedback.
In a year you'll be discussing you're release on Slashdot, and we'll be saying *BSD is dying. But that will be some of the best marketing and market research you can do, and it will all pay off.
I'm in a weird mood..
Get your Unix fortune now!
I fail to see why office or home applications should dictate a particular architecture. Gaming and lab work are probably the only things which may be picky, due to bus speeds. The AMD64 is a nice start, but when can we exepct some of the other housecleaning of PC design? All I've got on my desk at home is very souped up PC-XT. Meanwhile some really good architecture has died along the way as everyone fought to support quite possibly the most exasperating legacy beast, just like everyone else. Moo.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
<Microsoft>Thats not a bug its a feature</Microsoft>
Publicly document the hardware interface. That's all that's need, really. As a programmer and electrical engineer all I need is a decent spec sheet for a piece of hardware to construct an interface to a linux system.
Remember that documenting your interface does not mean revealing the secrets of what's going on under the hood! What do the signal lines do? What commands are accepted? What are the timing characteristics? What format of text/image/video flows along the lines? etc
First of all, provide documentation and an engineering contact to answer questions about the documentation. Keep in mind that you will get asked questions from sources other than those related to the core Linux development team - the *BSD teams may have questions for you, some hobbiest may ask questions - answer them all. Incorporate the answers to their questions into your documentation, etc.
If you are doing anything that is truly groundbreaking, for your company, but has been done in other places, at other times, the experienced OS developers in the free software community can sometimes provide invaluable feedback on what is wrong with your design.
For example, as I understand it, the AMD64 architecture did not have an IOMMU until rather late. The Linux developers working with AMD on providing support for this architecture pointed out that it was useful and a huge performance win to have one, so AMD reworked that into the architecture. That kind of feedback is invaluable, and something a company like MicroSoft simply can't give, because they lack the necessary cross-platform experience to care. I believe the major Linux distributors are open to consulting arrangements of this type - approach them and ask them for assistance!
If the hardware you have needs firmware to be loaded into it, consider what license the firmware is distributed under, and how that interacts with the licenses of the free software you are trying to work with. At the very least, make sure other people can redistribute the firmware, unmodified, so the users are not dependent on a download from your site.
So, document the hardware interfaces. Answer questions on the hardware, and involve those more knowledgeable than your company early and often to give a better design.
If you write your own drivers for Linux and one of the BSDs and release them under the GPL and BSDL with the complete documentation. From that point on the community can take care of maintaining and porting them if you don't (it's better if you do).
It's not enough to release your own closed-source driver for one architecture (like nvidia and ati do) because this locks out people on other architectures and later kernel versions.
Intel is trying to release Linux drivers at the same they release hardware. They are also trying to create a hardware copatability matrix. If you are a system builder or VAR this would be very helpfull. Some background:n ux/2100-7344_3-5465225.html?tag=nefd.top/
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstech nology/2002099285_intelasialinux24.html/
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstech nology/2002099285_intelasialinux24.html/
http://techrepublic.com.com/5100-22_11-5465929.htm l?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=tr/
http/news.com.com/Intel+more+active+in+desktop+Li
First of all, I must commend you and your company for caring about these things - it's definitely nice to see that there are companies who actually care about their customers. ^_~ That being said, here are a few things to get you started:
Hope this helps!
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
In Windoze land, Microsoft publishes a list of requirements, and offers testing services to ensure compliance. You code to these requirements and get the thing tested and validated. Once done, Microsoft awards you the right to put "Windows-certified" on your box, and you can consider your product "done" (modulo bug fixes/patches).
In F/OSS circles, no such certification program exists. There is no list of requirements; there is no explicit testing service. Instead, what there is is the complete kernel source code (so that you can determine precise requirements yourself), hundreds of existing drivers (to get you started writing your own), and hundreds of thousands of users who will beat up on your hardware/driver and liberally shower you with bug reports (of highly variable quality).
This may seem like a recipe for complete disaster but, depending on what you want to do, it's really not. Linux's device driver model is almost pathetically simple compared to the byzantine mess that Windows uses. So getting a driver with basic functionality is a fairly simple affair. Depending on your device, you'll probably be able to leverage off of existing infrastructure to handle bookkeeping details (for example, I2C bus devices already have an API layer that handles reference counts and locking; coding to it is dead-simple).
Conversely, there are some areas of Linux driver land that are still evolving. One of the big areas is power management. There are three major competing power management mechanisms for Linux (APM, ACPI, and the lesser-known DPM). None of them really address all power management needs and, while some sleep/suspend modes sorta kinda work, Linux's solution is far from complete. You'll be working with a moving target.
As other posters have already mentioned, publicly-available, complete hardware documentation (register maps, theory of operation, strapping options, clock diagrams, etc.) is absolutely essential . In case you get bored with your product or, heaven forfend, your company dies, the F/OSS community will be able to take up the slack. They'll also be able to add features or enhance kernel compatibility when and where it's needed. (Some lawyers or senior execs will try to veto a documentation release, citing imaginary fears such as "loss" of proprietary information and trade secrets. You are encouraged to nut-punch these knuckleheads until their opinion is changed.)
F/OSS is not as strictly regimented as the Windows camp, so strictly regimented project planning isn't as easy. There's a lot of chaos out there. This is, on balance, widely regarded as a good thing. You may be surprised at how well your engineers cope in such an environment. (Conversely, it will also help you identify more quickly exactly which features your users actually value.)
Schwab
P.S: If you have the ability, tell Microsoft to take their copy protection ("DRM") requirements and cram them.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
This guy is "in the hardware business".
Meaning, he buys hardware from a distributor, and with a $4 screwdriver, assembles said hardware and pitches it a customer.
I've been there, and done that. Trying to make one that's WINDOWS compatable is a royal pain in the arse, let alone OSS.
When I ran a store, we had a few lines of hardware that seemed to be more or less compatable with each other. We had to continually buy hardware of all kinds and test them to see how they did together.
It was always shocking to me how much of the hardware just didn't pass our testing. Our testing was pretty extensive, and consequently, the hardware lines we stocked were fairly limited.
Also, it was commonplace to have hardware revisions that would change without any notice whatsoever, ruining compatability.
At the time (ending Spring of 2000) one of the *WORST* offenders was Asus. On the other hand, a few relatively unknown brands (DFI and A-trend) scored rather well in our testing, and were cheaper to boot!
My best advice would be to simply test some hardware before you sell it, and see how compatable it is with your favorite distro.
Good luck.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
My guess this guy is working as a systems integrator. AKA he is building boxs.
I think he wants to know how to select parts that will work with Linux and BSD not how to build parts that will work with them.
If so it is a very good question. How would a hardware integrator know what Video, SATA card, Raid controllers, and motherboards to use?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.