OpenBSD Ahead of Linux for Wi-Fi Drivers

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Monday June 12, 2006 @08:12AM from the alle-menschen-sind-auslaender-fast-ueberall dept.

algae writes "It looks like some kernel developers have noticed that the OpenBSD project is including reverse-engineered drivers for wireless ethernet cards while Linux is still using binary blobs. A large part of the issue is that much OpenBSD development takes place abroad, where having to do clean-room reverse-engineering isn't as important." From the article: "Christoph Hellwig took another stance, 'please don't let this reverse engineering idiocy hinder wireless driver adoption, we're already falling far behind openbsd who are very successfully reverse engineering lots of wireless chipsets.'"

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Re:You can help end this argument by gonzopancho · 2006-06-12 17:15 · Score: 0, Troll

Bruce,

The OpenBSD "team" clearly ripped-off the HAL for the Atheros driver (its trivial to see this once you can see the Atheros HAL source.) I don't know what they did or didn't do on other drivers, but their behavior on the Atheros driver can't be called "reverse-engineering" (clean room or not).

Jim