FreeBSD 6.0 to Target Wireless Devices

BSDForums writes "FreeBSD is hoping to move beyond the server and desktop market by providing expanded wireless support. FreeBSD developer Scott Long said that 'one of the primary reasons for improving wireless support is to give companies the tools to put FreeBSD into their wireless devices. The guy at FreeBSD who is adding wireless support is under contract from wireless companies to do the work.'"

Comments

Re:this is really big

[Anonymous Coward]

Name a few, I've heard that the BSA gives pretty good bounties for snitching on companies that can't be bothered to obey the licenses. If they can't figure out the GPL, it's almost certain they don't properly adhere to the commercial licenses out there.

Code GIveaway

[SniperClops]

I see a number of companies switching to BSD so they don't have to give away their code like they do with the GPL

Re:The reluctant adoption of Linux

[iamdrscience]

That's bull really. I can do the GPL zealotry bit like the best of them, but most of the cool hacks with wireless devices do not come as a result of kernel changes released by companies. Most of them come from the fact that these devices simply are small, cheap systems that are able to run linux.

And I'm sure...

[Nom du Keyboard]

The guy at FreeBSD who is adding wireless support is under contract from wireless companies to do the work.

And I'm sure that someone will think that this just isn't pure. Like the Olympics, which was once ruled that only self-supporting people who could do it for "The Love of the Sport" were worthy.

Personally this is a great move for OSS, and a vote of confidence in the value of freely available Unixs by the companies. I hope it becomes a model for each part of the industry to do more to support their devices (graphic cards, USB plug in devices, you name it) to the free and OSS communities!

I will be disappointed if there is a single negative comment about this aspect of how the work is being funded and getting done!

Re:And I'm sure...

[Fweeky]

Where's the lack of control? I don't like Adaptec's attitude with regard to aaccli, but that's their choice; I have the choice not to buy any more of their shitty RAID controllers. Ditto with WiFi cards; I have control over whether I'm happy to have my hardware work even though the software may be closed because those that make it are forced to make it so by dicks, or I can get something good.

Delivering "ultimatums" which everyone knows are going to be ignored just alienates people, users, developers and companies alike. Here in the real world, I need aac(4) to work because they're in a couple of important machines, and I wouldn't appreciate FreeBSD removing it just because the only online management tool is only available from Dell/Red Hat as a Linux binary. What does removing it gain anyone, aside from making Adaptec less likely to fund/support future FreeBSD driver development and pissing off those who actually use the cards?

My appologies for being so pragmatic; however, my attitude is more along the lines of "if company x wants to be lame and only provide binaries, fine, I'll just buy from company y who do provide open source drivers". Part of control is being able to do non-optimal things.

OpenBSD

[cyberkahn]

This is not intended to be a flame as I really like FreeBSD as well. FreeBSD could learn a lot from the OpenBSD project in this area. I have been absolutely amazed at OpenBSD's out of the box wireless detection configuration. I installed OpenBSD on my laptop over my WPC11 wireless NIC without effort. I also had the same results with the WMP54G.

Linux is in the same boat

[Billly Gates]

There was talk early in the year about Linux forking if you read slashdot.

The issue was non GPL binary drivers in the kernel and module support.

First off its Powell and the FCC and not greedy capitalists making the decisions to stay closed with wifi. Its required infact to be a licensee of the FCC to have permission to sell your product.

Now the greed has spread to all markets in computers as the FCC could change its rules for any product that produces EMI. Also greed and the length it takes to file a patent makes closed source drivers attractive to protect their IP. Their shareholders demand it.

Its a mess but at least wireless companies are legally obligated to stay closed source for that reason. Someone hacking on a wifi router could wreck havoc for things like airplanes and other equipment utilizing radio waves.

Re:Proprietary source is not the reason..

[LuSiDe]

The real reason why companies are a little afraid of the GPL is that there is always the potential for lawsuits.

Granted, it's a remote possibility, but a possibility all the same

And this is where FreeBSD can give people a choice.

First of all: why are those 'remote', legal possibilities not existant in FreeBSD? SCO? There's almost nobody who believes they have a case anymore and they also said some things about *BSD. So... what else? We're discussing drivers. If i write a driver for the Linux kernel and i release that sourcecode under the GPL then why would that make me somehow more vulnerable to a lawsuit than a BSD licensed driver for FreeBSD? Or if i write a proprietary driver? Nah, the significant advantage is the option to write a proprietary driver for FreeBSD. However that is also possible for the Linux kernel and the Linux kernel is more popular (esp for embedded purposes i think -- i have no statistics or ath just observation from linuxembedded.com whereas not seen much FreeBSD-based embedded hardware).

most companies would rather not be bothered with the GPL if given a choice.

Debatable. Given there are many corporations which deal with the GPL. The hazard is also debatable.

And what happens when the slashdot community burns a company for forgetting to post something, or posting modifications that are difficult to utilize. Remember Apple and Konqueror?

I guess Apple prefers the BSD license though, yeah. One example doesn't make it a yes/no though and then again Apple doesn't contribute much open source software either. Its not in their interest (therefore i argue: Why would i care that Apple gets free goodies? They are being egoistic. Why should i be altruistic to them then?). But, different corporations have different interests. RedHat, for example, has a different view and i know various corporations which support the Linux kernel via a GPLed driver. ATI and NVidia do support a driver for Linux (and NVidia FreeBSD as well) but its not under the GPL. Its not in their interest to do so. But did they ever state they dislike the GPL or dealing with it? Did NVidia state they prefer to deal with the BSD license? Or FreeBSD? Over GPL or the Linux kernel?

And assuming it's just as good as Linux, it's a better choice due to legal issues.

The former is debatable. Regarding the latter: What legal issues does Linux have which FreeBSD doesn't have? The only one currectly known -excluding SCO- is the BSD license itself which means in this case that the corporation would not have to give their sourcecode changes back even when they'd distribute the binary. Wether thats a good or a bad thing -- debatable.

IOW, to end my post: I agree w/you on choice, i agree that there are circumstances where you're right if not only for the fact that there are so many corporative possiblities in this world. But to say the BSD license is always in advantage on a legal point of view while ignoring its protective powers, is too non-pragmatic to me.

Re:Differences between embedded Linux vs embedded

[LuSiDe]

Yes, but who says the whole system needs to be BSD licensed? Or GPL licensed? If you use BusyBox what does it matter wether thats GPL or BSD licensed when you have not made any modifications? Same for uClibc.

uClibc may work with FreeBSD. The Debian GNU/KFreeBSD guys have the FreeBSD kernel working with a non-BSD userland space. This would mean one could use (parts) of the BSD licensed kernel, write modifications, and license them under whatever although i'm not sure uClibc also works.