Slashdot Mirror
Linux Kernel Devs Offer Free Driver Development
schwaang writes "Linux Kernel hacker Greg Kroah-Hartman, author of Linux Kernel in a Nutshell has posted an epic announcement on his blog. This could portend increased device compatibility for Linux users, higher-quality drivers, and fewer non-free binary blobs." From the announcement: "[T]he Linux kernel community is offering all companies free Linux driver development... All that is needed is some kind of specification that describes how your device works, or the email address of an engineer that is willing to answer questions every once in a while. If your company is worried about NDA issues surrounding your device's specifications, we have arranged a program... in order to properly assure that all needed NDA requirements are fulfilled. Now your developers will have more time to work on drivers for all of the other operating systems out there, and you can add 'supported on Linux' to your product's marketing material."
I wonder how many companies will be imprudent/progressive enough to take up this offer.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
Seems like a good idea, but it also seems like it would give the device manufacturers an out. "I'm sorry, but we don't officially support the linux operating system". This way they get drivers written for them for free, and don't need to provide any tech support for the device to those users who purchase it for linux. Anyone else see this happening?
"All that is needed is some kind of specification that describes how your device works". They also need some real hardware to test the brand new written drivers. Specifications are not enough. Who will test the real hardware with the fresh drivers in a real-world operation ?
-- Rastignac was here.
Isn't the problem that Microsoft try and repress driver development for other operating systems?
Whatever you might say about the Linux community - that it is elitist or sanctimonious or whatever - it is impossible to ignore their commitment to what they believe in. That somebody would be willing to write device drivers for nothing, apparently just to forward the cause of a free operating system, is pretty impressive. Microsoft and Apple can match this devotion only in the ferocity with which they defend their control over their customers, in anti-trust trials and by imposing DRM.
Peter
A really quick scan of the price of windows driver development, demonstrates how much actual value this is for business. Now all you would need to do is pay someone to extend the drivers to other platforms! Eureka!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I think this kind of action, and offer for help is needed by companies. I hope it will be touted enough. What I know is that, companies having really hard times finding skilled coders for developing Linux drivers. Most of them does not care about the specifications, as they have already patents pending for their works, but they can't actually find people to code for Linux and/or they don't willing to pay more than Windows developers for Linux developers for a smaller market.
Is this realistic though? Are companies actually going to take this offer up? If they do, the impact could be awesome (hardware compatibility that could rival Windows and/or Mac OSX)...
Nice one!
ilovegeorgebush
This is obviously great news for companies willing to have an open source driver, but not willing to pay for its development or to release specifications. Sadly, I don't think this will help certain companies, like NVidia and ATI, whos drivers contain third-party proprietary pieces, which they don't want out in the open, or?
Of course, any initiative that may result in more well written drivers for Linux is a great and welcomed one!
This is a very good next step for Linux. Being open-source is a good thing already, but now Linux can evolve further. A lot of manufacturers are not able to write code for Linux because it consumes a lot of time or it is considered not a market where their core business lies. Now they can easily create drivers so a bigger market is drilled.
Daxy's Networking Blog
I have never written drivers so I may be way out in left field here, but how close are we to being able to specify a standard driver model, with compatibility across operating systems? It seems to me that drivers are one of the biggest impediments to OS adoption. They are also a huge cost center for device manufacturers. Imagine if 99.9% of the driver code could be the same across platforms. Is this even remotely possible? Or perhaps the Linux Kernel driver developers could figure out a way to adapt Windows drivers to run, perhaps in an interpreted or emulated fashion, on Linux (ala Virtual PC). Just a thought.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Is this any different from what Theo De Raadt (from OpenBSD) and others were implying? The only exception being that they believe in 'True, Open Source Software & Documentation' without license or other restrictions, and no accepting ridiculous NDA's for just 'documentation' - hence the BSD license and OpenBSD's goal(s). In the end, Linux will be half OSS half NOT, with NDA's up the wazzo and a huge mess. I used both for now, but personally, I'll stick with OSS as it was originally meant to be. Even Linus Torvalds is losing control of his original ideology too.
linux numbers are on the rise. secrecy about hardware specs is a sad footnote in computer history. closed source software and closed specifications are on the way out, thou closed source may be with us until an open source replacement is contributed. when I was considering purchasing my next computer I choose a linux vendor who sold me my computer's hardware that has 100% gpl driver support; the same holds true for any devices I may choose to purchase. It's either in the kernel source, or i'm not buying.
Other than the public announcement, how is this any different from the way things already work?
The community already writes free drivers for vendors who provide specs and (even better in some cases) loan some hardware.
There are already situations where Linux devs have been able to work out NDA-acceptable solutions.
Really, all the announcement is saying is, "Look, we do this. We've been doing this for years. Just letting you know how things work over here."
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
i think it would be a really great thing if the linux community got together a site to petition hardware manufacturers to allow drivers to be developed for their products.
if i have a device that isn't supported by linux yet and i want the company that made it to let linux devs in on the hardware specs, my emails/calls won't mean SHIT to them. if there are several hundred signatures behind a petition for them to let people develop linux drivers for their product, on the other hand, maybe they'll take it more seriously.
This is such a quality idea! I don't see how this could not benefit everybody. Manufacturers don't have to worry about writing drivers, and us linux users get better device support, eureka!
So? Nothing new... That's the point of open source - give out source code publicly, and someone will extend on it. Give out hardware documentation publicly, and someone will write a driver for linux, BSD, or any free operating system that the geek with the hardware in say is running. There always were many people willing to write the drivers, but impeded by the lack of documentation. I don't see any news here.
It's open source, so the driver code would be visible to everyone. So how
do they keep their NDA? I think that will determine if this will become
a succes.
Will they be binary drivers? Or can gcc compile scrambled code?
Any ideas?
could this be a "Mr Nice Guy" aproach to getting in to companys hardware specs, to point out all the holes and flaws within the current driver sets for all os's and the hardware its self?
portfolio
Not if Linux devs will be signing NDAs. They'll have the info, they'll code up something for linux which works, but everyone else who develops a Free/Open OS will have to fight the battle all over again -- if not be told "Why not use linux? we helped with drivers for THAT!"
I think he can start with Brother - http://solutions.brother.com/linux/sol/printer/lin ux/lpr_drivers.html
Great Work!
Music is the sedative for mind...
I'll be able to get my damn sound card to work in Linux.
Check out the cave on the east side of lake Hylia. Strange and wonderful things live in it.
All that is needed is some kind of specification that describes how your device works, or the email address of an engineer that is willing to answer questions every once in a while
That's all they have to do now, basically - any modestly popular piece of hardware will probably get a driver if specs are available. But that's the same big "if" that has always been a problem.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Unfortunatly (?) driver support is the leat of the problems the Linuzzzz community has to face. Solving this may be a little step forward, but don't expect miracles.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Other than the public announcement, how is this any different from the way things already work?
Actually this really is something new, and quite an announcement. It was never the case before that any old random driver would get created by the open source community. The way OSS development generally works is there has to be a strong need, strong backing, or a high fun factor, for things to get done.
Prior to this announcement it's not like there was a group of people dedicated to writing drivers -- just waiting for companies to release new hardware, then they'd scurry to reverse engineer it and write a driver. Nor do companies (generally) release hardware specs in the hopes that others will provide a driver for their product.
A significant portion of initial open source driver development comes from the device manufacturers themselves, and smaller companies without the resources to spearhead these developments simply don't have the ability to have Linux support.
Your conception that "The community already writes free drivers for vendors who provide specs and loan some hardware" isn't true in the vast majority of cases.
This really is a big change, because now anyone can create a hardware device and actually have formal linux support, and have this printed on the box. This creates a formal avenue for companies to easily, reliably, and cheaply have Linux support for their products.
as if millions of chairs just went through windows at some big software company, and then were suddenly silenced.
stuff |
The folks at Xiph have had a similar offer for a few years:
We've got a fixed-point implementation of the Ogg Vorbis 1.0 decoder, called Tremor. As of this evening, Tremor is licensed under a BSD-style license, is free for all use, and you can download it right here. If you need help implementing Vorbis support into your hardware player, we will give you any resources at our disposal to make it happen (including engineer time). If you want Vorbis in your player (like your potential customers do), we want to help you.I don't know if anyone ever took them up on it. Ogg support in portable hardware has come a long way since then. I used to come back to this page every couple of weeks to see if anything had changed. Now a lot of players have it... I hope this takes off.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
There are certain drivers out there in the Free world that were developed under NDAs. XFree86 (maybe XOrg too) have obfuscated source files due to NVidia requiring it. The ATi Rage 128 driver (remember the Linux native support?) basically loads a big blob of firmware code.
Sure it's in the source file, but it's not its preferred form for editing, unless everyone at ATi is a masochist.
If anybody from Kodak is reading this I have wanted to see a driver for the DVC 325 camera under Linux for the last 7 years.
Is anybody Listening?
Now you have a free developer.
I'd Tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past
How long till a EE undergrad sends them a breadboard project and tells them "U write me da driver, u promise!"
The arguments about out of the box driver support for linux happen all the time. The reality is that the issue is not out of the box support. I often have more functionality out of the box with a modern linux distro than windows on the same hardware but that only gets me so far. The biggest hurdle is supporting less common hardware. Adding driver support in the kernel is great, but there is no way they can keep pace with the release of new obscure hardware. We need a way to support less common hardware without constantly trying to bundle drivers into the kernel. Also the kernel developers are not always willing to merge 3rd party code into the kernel if it isn't to their standards or is perhaps not 100% complete. I completely understand this process, but it doesn't help people who have to search out these drivers and try to compile them from source.
The best example I have is my webcam. I know that when I purchased it it would have linux support because i did my research, but I still had to know how to do the research, how to track down the right driver and then how to build it from source. What we need is a driver manager that operates similarly to or in conjunction with our package managers. If during install or after a first boot I was told that a driver for my webcam was not installed as part of the distro it could then either download a driver package if one is available or it could at least suggest a link to download a driver not yet being packaged for my distro. Having to check my dmesg to see if my webcam shows up as a generic USB device or if a driver has been assigned to it is a terrible solution, we need a more friendly means of checking a supported devices database and better way to get access to the drivers that support our less common hardware. This is especially important for people who don't hand pick their hardware and are less familiar with exact model numbers or sometimes know even less.
This system that manages drivers might also do well to phone home to the distro maintainer when possible to catalog all of the hardware that is not being supported by a driver. That way we can at least get a better idea of where the biggest holes in device support are.
Fear trumps hope and ignorance trumps both
A big reason these drivers have not existed to date is because Microsoft has strong armed these companies into not offering them. This will only get worse. Make sure you also maintain a list of companies that refuse this offer. That will be just as important as the list of those that do.
It kind of depends on what the NDA is protecting. A company lawyer isn't going to approve a new course because there's no benefit (there's a Dilbert cartoon on the subject). So they will be conservative in their reading of an NDA.
The lawyers reading for the Linux Kernel have a reason to read and understand (or even find workarounds for the legalese cf Novell/MS). It also sends the liability out to these lawyers rather than keep it the companies fault.
So they may find that the NDA still applies but that what NEEDS to be done to get a driver isn't actually forbidden.
I assume that the reason why most companies won't do open source drivers is because they want to cripple the hardware from the driver, to speculate or do stuff like DRM and things like that..
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Great, would Creative Labs be will to go along with this or not? That or other onboard chipset manufacturers so they are up to date with the latest products out there?
The announcement claims that the driver will be "automatically included in all Linux distributions". There is no way that is going to happen if the driver is binary, or even if it is obfuscated.
So I can't see how they can support NDA.
Who is he speaking for? The whole Linux kernel community? I didn't think it worked that way. Even Linus is as much a cat herder as a boss, once you get beyond a few core people. The population of kernel developers who can be ordered (the difference between "might get a driver" and "will get a driver") to write drivers for obscure hardware they have no interest in must surely be fairly small. Who's actually in on this? Are there a few hundred kernel devs who've agreed to work on whatever they are assigned? I'm worried that this will backfire when they can't actually find anybody who wants to write the driver for a engraving machine that sells 400 units per year and has a particularly baroque interface. I don't expect there will be a problem for WiFi, TV or video cards, but there's a whole lot of hardware out there and not all of it is interesting.
Those are some pretty big promises he's making. I'm wondering what's there to back them up.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
As an example of extending to other platforms, we may cite the 3DFx Voodoo board.
After the company collapsed, users were left with no drivers for recent windows version (XP, XP64 and Vista).
But, the Linux drivers happened to be open source.
So most of the work you may see on websites like http://3dfxzone.it/ for Windows, is mostly based on libglide and Mesa3d for linux.
(This is also another proof that open-source enable something to survive beyond the death of it's parent company)
Another example may be the linux USB stack, which was later ported to both the Cromwell xbox bios and ReactOS (opensource clone of the Windows NT system, cousin of Wine project).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The costs of making a driver are minimal, even to the point of most devices actually showing a profit because they sell more than enough devices to offset the extra costs. The only really obvious exception to this would be a 3D accelerator driver- and even then, it's more of a chicken and egg situation. The profit could be there if they'd sink the money.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Fanboys (and I buy NVidia kit) keep saying this but never WHOSE IP where and why. Not since SGI were touted by NVidia and then SGI, on being asked, said definitively "there is nothing we license NVidia that cannot be open sourced".
is if this generates an increase in users beyond a few % of the desktop
once that happens, it becomes self sustaining: if you have a few % of the market, a lot of people will write drivers on their own [apple @5%]; once you are beyond ~ 10%, most will write drivers on their own.
you can add 'supported on Linux' to your product's marketing material.
Writing a driver is one thing, but providing support is another.
As far as I can see, there is nothing new here. People were always
willing to write drivers for Linux & provide it free. Many a times
they did it even without help from the manufacturing. So I don't
see what exactly this announcement offers the manufacturers?
I don't see manufacturers willing to stamp "supported on Linux"
on their boxes just because the community made an official
announcement to write drivers.
I doubt the
Some of it's Microsoft's doing, yes. But it's a lot more complicated than that.
"Show me the money"
"We have to protect our IP"
Those two statements I get told QUITE often in relation to my driver consulting work I currently do.
Both are varying degrees of wrong- and where the trick lies is in convincing the company in question that it's wrong to hold that position in the first place. Both are very difficult to shift because they're usually NOT fact based positions to begin with.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Digg Story
Well, I doubt nvidia and ATI will answer that one...
so one of the biggest problems - full support of the most popular graphics cards - is still unsolved.
You want *useful* OpenGL support in Linux? Use the blobs. There is no other choice, unfortunately.
Also, I find the answer "use Windows then" ironic - it means that for using the OpenGL standard I have to use a non-free OS because the free one locks it out. Oh, except when using 3D stuff from 1995..
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
My company uses Linux as OS platform of choice for our telecommunication systems' cards. The cards' comm functions are built around chips from various manufacturers. We write our own Linux LKM drivers for this chips, based on the specs and even the "generic" source code delivered to us from chip manufacturers under a NDA. Although we would be happy to get support from "real gurus", we are bound by NDA's and therefore cannot leak the specs - they are not ours.
Read the last line of the article....
......"
"I will also be available at FreedomHEC 2007 held adjacent to WinHEC,
It has always worked like this in linux kernel development. The manufacturer has the option of developing the driver himself and open source it (to be included in main kernel distro), or give as much specs as possible about his device and pray someone from the community will pick it up.
The reference to "enterprise" version is a reference to the window enterprise version where "clients" are at the mercy of the OEM to give updates.
Put it next to the Intel Inside! or Powered by AMD:
'Has been reported to work on Linux!'
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Of course that is against the GPL-licence. But the companies have their reasons
for not showing their specifications.
In circuit design it already exist, that you can pack your design as "black box module"
and give it to others to compile into their designs. They cannot see the inside but they
can compile and test it.
Wouldn't this be a desirable feature of GCC as well? Not only for binary drivers, but also
for propriety software distribution. Then companies can even distribute it as source, and
let the automake tools do their work on each platform.
Wouldn't that make the Linux/BSD platforms a lot more attractive to software vendors that
nowadays need to support all kinds of flavors of platforms?
I'm glad to hear the expressly stated by a kernel developer, but is this really anything new? I'd been under the impression for quite some time that any product with specifications had decent open source drivers, and that the manufacturers knew it. I have several pieces of hardware that have open source drivers because the hardware manufacturers released specs. I thought the main reason we didn't have more drivers was that the hardware developers were more interested in protecting trade secrets than catering to Linux users. Several hardware manufacturers have already figured out that the drivers will be written at no cost to them (and no obligation for them to provide support), and that all they have to do is release some specifications. So is there really anything new here?
To that, I would add that Epson is a particularly good choice. They've cooperated with the SANE project in providing hardware specs, sometimes even for hardware not yet released. They even make available a binary-only Linux driver and scanning utility through their Japanese division, though of course the open-source SANE support is preferable.
I have a Perfection Photo 2400, from a couple years back. It works flawlessly with xsane. (Do double check against the supported-hardware list, however, because some Epson models actually use third-party components for which no specs are available.)
iSKUNK!
How to thoroughly undermine other projects' efforts.
What you have here is a complete, cop-out compromise.
While other people (most notably, the OpenBSD project) try to publicize all the obnoxious aspects of closed-information hardware, there goes the Linux people, all ready to sign NDAs to get new drivers. Of course, it seems like the exact same thing to most people. But:
- NDA drivers will not contain enough information to understand what is really going on, like hardcoded magic constants, no real register description, no comments as to what is going on.
- you won't have blanket NDA for a whole group of people. Some person will sign the NDA, and develop the driver. If that guy is a kick-ass developer, fine. But if he isn't ? you end up with a bad driver.
- abandon all hope for audits and community bug-fixes... reading an NDA driver is marginally simpler than reverse-engineering one.
Basically, it boils down to moving the trust issue around, from the evil company to the nice free software developer... but not to *everybody*. It's all about freedom, isn't it ?
More importantly, it offers a simple cop-out to most companies. Up until now, they haven't really reorganized their ways of managing intellectual property... they will always tell you they can't give you documentation, because part of the IP they bought elsewhere, and they can't give it to you, and it's not cost-efficient for them to track their IP purchases. People wanting to have linux drivers was putting some pressure on them, and the recent campaigning against BLOB drivers was making progress.
And now, the linux people have gone and completely undercut that campaign. Nice going guys. I'm still wondering whether you're clueless, or whether you're playing in the marketroid court.
So when an IHV posts includes 'Linux Support' to their drivers, what happens when an OEM has a stop ship? Who will answer the phone? Who will work for 2 weeks straight to diagnose and resolve the issue?
What this approach does is allow the Linux market to flourish despite itself. It actually moves us further away from having OEM preloads with Linux installed.
"Come to Linux. Please? We have cookies!"
Surely ATI and Nvidia have been aware for years that Linux hackers just want the specs to their cards, and are quite willing to do the programming themselves. For whatever reasons they have, they don't want to release that information, and I don't think this announcement is going to change that.
if Linux is going to become a viable alternative for the girlfriend
Dude, don't get me wrong, I think Linux is sexy. But not that sexy.
Why would we want the operating system's kernel to be bloated with drivers? The kernel should stick to what the kernel does best. Any device drivers should be separate from the kernel. Having to recompile the kernel every time a new piece of hardware is installed is extremely ridiculous. Having a modular (orthogonal) driver infrastructure is the best course of action. Hey! While we're at it, why don't we just ditch Linux and concentrate development efforts on Hurd? Hurd's a very good example of an orthogonal design, and it's more or less complete! Linus, himself, said he wouldn't have started developing Linux if Hurd was already complete in 1991. Well, now Hurd is complete, so we can all move away from this blob-infested mess. Even if the community has to fork Hurd to get it out the door*, it would be a far better alternative than what we have now.
* The community doesn't have to do this, as there's already a packaging effort underway.
Have you driven a fnord... lately?
You must wait a little bit before using this resource; please try again later.
The scanner companies don't support Linux and don't ship Linux drivers with their product. Linux supports the scanners and comes with the drivers built in. You need to check which scanners are supported by Linux, not the other way around. It bothers me that companies don't advertise that their products are supported by Linux, but I understand that they don't want to deal with the support calls for a driver they didn't write.
NDA = unmaintainable code.
... who still give a damn about freedom despite its being inconvenient.
The moment the folks who signed the NDA move on to another project (or lose interest) is the moment that the code becomes unmaintainable. Source code is NOT a substitute for a hardware spec.
An example of how to do it right:
In OpenBSD there has been a huge grassroots push for hardware documentation over the past couple of years (which earned Theo deRaadt, project founder, the FSF's Award for the Advancement of Free Software), mainly in the areas of wireless (where OpenBSD's support far exceeds Linux's) and RAID management; they mobilize their relatively small user base via the mailing lists and refuse to sign NDAs so that we can all (since their license allows their code to be ported to Linux) enjoy free, open, well-documented drivers.
Deals like this one seriously undermine their efforts.
I can only imagine how much pull the Linux community would have if the kernel developers followed the OpenBSD example. (In this respect, Torvalds has been a huge waste of potential. He seems to be well-spoken, well-groomed, and charismatic. Shame he hides behind his "i'm an engineer not a philospher" schtick.)
Perhaps it's harsh, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that Linux has mostly lost the idealism it once had as its fortunes are increasingly intertwined with corporate ventures. Pragmatism and NDAs over proper documentaion is not a good thing. If I paid for the hardware, it would be nice to be able to use it as I please.
Anyway, I'm very greatful for the likes of the FSF, OpenBSD, EFF, etc
According to NVIDIA, some 90-95% of their driver code is identical across all their platforms -- and they support an impressive number of platforms.
Unfortunately, I just pulled that number out of my ass, and can't find anything to back it up. But you have to figure it's got to be true, somewhat, otherwise they'd never be able to support all the OSes they do -- Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, with 32-bit and 64-bit support on Linux and (for most cards) Solaris. I dislike binary blobs as much as the next guy, especially in kernel space, but this is some impressive engineering.
It's worth mentioning that some of the other responses are absolutely right: The only way to even have a stable cross-platform driver API, at the moment, would be to either kill performance (think FUSE for cross-platform filesystems) or to force everyone to use the same platform. As much as I'd like to see everyone forced to use Linux for a kernel, I realize that's both unfair and unrealistic -- when a sufficiently large group of people "standardize" on an OS, they standardize on Windows. Just look at Korea.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
an enterprising reporter to contact the HW manufacturers and ask them if thay are going to be taking advantage of this generous offer, then post a list of the decliners and accepters. Then we will have a reliable basis as to which vendors to avoid or support, respectively.
I'm sure Maureen O'Gara, with her SCO-honed investigative skills and top-notch journalistic ethics is burning the phone lines with deep probing inquiries on behalf of the consumers even as you read this.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Today, hardware design is meaningless. It was previously true that if you built a better hardware platform that you could sell it for a premium price and have a product. Today, that really isn't true - what counts is having software to make commodity hardware do something the competition doesn't do or do as well.
What this means is all the value in a PC hardware device is either in firmware or in the driver. The hardware can be easily copied by anyone in China and they can start churning out 10x the volume the original company can overnight. If they have the right specifications.
Similarly, getting the driver is as easy as buying one copy of the original hardware. Most average customers wouldn't think twice about installing a driver that said ATI for the half-price board they just bought that is called API. Or AIT. Or BTI. So stealing the driver is easy.
So, why is ATI in business today when their hardware could be copied by knock-off Chinese companies? Because they haven't fully described the interface and the driver won't work without the undocumented interface being the same. Now, once there is an open-source Linux driver for ATI hardware the only thing stopping the Chinese knock-offs from shipping is ethics. I don't see that as a huge hurdle.
It is already an established fact the US will allow import of such products, even while the infringed company is suing. ATI would be out of business in a month after a complete driver specification was released.
Hopefully we'll see a corresponding announcement by TLF to clear up any doubt.
Scanner support on Linux has been the one thing that I've found to be elusive.
Samsung seems generally Linux-friendly.
I've been using an SCX-4100 laser 3-in-1 for over a year, on FC2 and SuSE 10.
The SCO lawsuit makes me wish my company were in Utah. We need a new building.
That's another AD move done by Greg (after the used-by-none Linux DDK) to gather attention towards his progressively becoming irrelevant figure. ..., and they do cost money to their employers (quite a bit actually). ...
The free Linux device drivers has always been true, form day zero of Linux development.
It has always been known that if a company producing HW released a spec (either to the public or the a few developers under NDA), someone would have picked it up and made a driver for Linux.
The "free" word here applies to the company producing the HW, not to the opearation as a whole.
This because nowadays a very large percent of kernel developers are under contract with companies like RedHat, Novel,
What next now, "Post a bug to the Linux community and someone will fix it for free"? Welcome to 1992
http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php - Section 2 of OSI's Open Source Definition
That said, an NDA still may not make it impossible to write a driver. If the specs are under NDA, that means nobody else can see the specs. It doesn't *necessarily* mean that nobody can write a driver that interfaces with those specs. This depends a great deal on the wording and intent of the NDA itself. Naturally, some people will consider a driver to be a description of the spec, and hence not allowed under the NDA. Some people will not. Specs often contain a lot of things that aren't strictly required to make a device go; it may be these parts, the implementation details, that the NDA is intended to protect. The best thing to do would be to separate an interface specification from the implementation specification, and release the former NDA-free. The next best thing would be to invite a developer to sign an NDA and develop an Open Source driver.
Not possible for every piece of hardware out there, but possible for many.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
In Linux context, I believe the correct term is "kernel module" instead of "drivers".
Specs are not a hardware design, and open specs don't un-protect patented hardware.
More to the point, any chinese OEM can already de-compile and reverse-engineer ATI's Windows driver. And that has been true for years.
> That's called extortion, and it's illegal.
Like that ever stopped Microsoft before.
> I would hope the DoJ steps in at that point.
Like that ever stopped Microsoft before.
d) obfuscated code in the kernel tree (with original kept private to those kernel devs that have signed the NDA)
Probably a license violation (google for "gpl perferred form obfuscate")
The relevant part of the GPL defines the source code for a work as "The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it."
I've read a couple of opinions that mildly obfuscated code fails to fit this definition. I call bullshit on that. This definition is way too vague to account for code that doesn't carry sufficient documentation, either because it was external to it to begin with or because it was ripped out.
Although it facilitates the open development model, the requirement not to maintain a development source tree and remove extra information from it for release treads dangerously close to thought police.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
Megalomaniacs are insane, hence it is easy to see where they can be quite stupid in some areas, even though they might seem brilliant in others.
A situation like you describe (in fact were I hardware vendor I would love them to attempt it against me, I'd be jumping up and down for one sentence on the record that shows that, fatcity rich!) would open up MS to further anti competetive monopoly abuse charges, which could be brought in a civilian class action suit, and/or authority prosecution. They are still under investigation in Iowa and europe for past actions, and demonstrating that nothing had changed with them would be harmful to them if it got to court. The quid pro quo in the discussions with the outside hardware vendors would have to be looked at, but if it contains something along an "do what we say or else" provision as regards interoperability with other OSes would be the determining factor, IMO. Threatening the hardwave developer that his hardware would not get a windows approved sticker because it ran on other OSes or had an open driver or open specs,etc, would just nail them *hard*, and an NDA is NO, repeat NO, legal shield to try to hide that situation. You can't sign away rights legally, nor can you agree to engage in criminal coverups legally, so called IP protection or not.
Hard to get going, yes, hard to prove, yes. Possible? Still yes. We have a browser market, they got hit (too late to do much good) with abuses that stifled Netscape, then later on with media playback. The entire OS, which has to be based on drivers to be a functional product, could be used as the standard to determine abusive behavior. If they are still strong arming vendors to produce only hardware and drivers that lock out competition, because of threats to stop working with them or charge more money and not give some seal of approval for the third party product (your lockout scenario), that could most likely be easily determined to be a technical and legal abuse of monopoly, in direct contradiction to their previous settlement terms.
So I say let them try it, with as many vendors as possible, that gives the potential suit a lot more evidence to get theoretically.
For example, the HTC universal is a closed proprietary device, and getting linux working on it has been an uphill struggle for the dedicated team working on it (and they have achieved wonders - kudos to them!). Check out their progress on UniversalStatus.
Even the Sharp Zaurus, until recently one of the few handhelds which came with linux out of the box still has proprietary/closed-source elements - the SD driver is one example. One of the biggest missing pieces of the jigsaw is an accelerated video driver for the Zaurus SL-6000 series - there's a Toshiba TC6393XB chip for which virtually no documentation is available (it also drives the SD card slot, so presumably Toshiba didn't want to release the programmers guide for fear of giving out information on that somewhat proprietary standard).
From the post summary:
It could, and this offer of free labor is unquestionably generous, but there's nothing in the blog post to indicate that non-free software will be rejected. Non-free software in the Linux kernel is an important issue, and it would be interesting to read more about how this is going to be dealt with.
Digital Citizen
"for a girlfriend" isn't the same as "as a girlfriend" The OP's statement is thus only funny if your English skills are severely lacking.
"I'm sorry, but we don't officially support the linux operating system". This way they get drivers written for them for free, and don't need to provide any tech support for the device to those users who purchase it for linux. Anyone else see this happening?
Sounds fine to me. It beats the hell out of the current situation, where the companies don't support Linux at all, don't release specs on the hardware, and the drivers are either crummy compile-it-yourself alpha versions, only available for stuff that's 18 months out of date and gone from store shelves, or nonexistent.
I'll take unofficial quasi-support that results in timely, working drivers, over complete ignorance of the platform that results in nothing, any day.
Furthermore, the situation is only going to get worse unless we can get hardware manufacturers on board. More and more peripheral devices are dumping Flash and EPROMs for non-static RAM and firmware blobs that are loaded by the driver. 90% of the time, it's utterly impossible to reverse-engineer the on-device firmware without help from the manufacturer, and it's generally illegal to distribute their firmware blobs without permission. Unless they cooperate, and give Linux developers some specs, and permission to distribute the firmware blobs, getting a Linux system up and running on new hardware is going to become a major chore.
If you think the situation is bad now, just wait until every Ethernet card on the market uses a firmware image that's loaded by the (Windows-only) driver, and in order to get the system running, you need to download the driver and extract the firmware yourself (because it'll be illegal to distribute). You'll have to go to the manufacturer's web site, download the Win98 driver, extract the firmware, put it on a floppy (because, remember, the target machine's Ethernet doesn't work), install it, reboot, and pray. The situation we have with wireless cards isn't some aberration: it's the future, unless manufacturers can be convinced that supporting Linux -- officially or not -- is a Good Idea.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I'm not sure I believe this.
I worked doing VLSI design for a short time as an intern, so, though I can't claim overwhelming expertise, I've learned more about the industry than I think the general public knows. Foundry tech is hideously expensive, requiring gigantic investments. It costs so much that it's gotten to the point that even competitors do joint work (with tension and assorted legal handcuffs, to be sure -- and they keep it quiet -- but in the end they all cross-license with each other) to develop new foundry technologies (and, to a lesser extent, "I.P."), because it's just so. damn. expensive. Old rivals are forced to quietly build each others' chips, because neither can handle it on their own.
You might be able to design a chip, send it off to TSMC, and have them produce it -- but even that costs boatloads. And it's not going to work quite right the first time!
I recall, maybe a year ago, there was a big press release about a Chinese CPU which was supposed to demonstrate China's rising power. It was about as fast as a Pentium III. Given what they were starting with, that's pretty damn impressive -- but you also notice that they couldn't pop out a Core 2 Duo. There's a lot of infrastructure required that's just not there yet.
Even people like PowerVR, with their Kyro cores, couldn't effectively challenge ATI and nVidia: They produced a decent budget core, for a little while, but they couldn't keep up, and now they're designing cores for chips other people design which end up in cell phones. They're probably making more money that way -- but they just couldn't stay on the bleeding edge.
So, no, a company in China can't build a low-budget ATI-killer overnight -- and I don't believe it's just the drivers.
I forwarded a link to the article to my boss today. We don't make hardware, but we do make software systems that are sometimes dependant on special hardware. He commented that this was really good ammo in those cases when we have trouble obtaining working drivers for our (Linux-based) products. This tells me that announcements like this one are needed and necessary - if only to remind the world around us of the incredible and important work done by the large contingency of open source and free software developers. And that it is actually available, for free, to anyone.
Soon now, OSDL and TLF will be selling "Linux Ready"-stickers for OEM's to paste on to their thingies.
I don't know of any product that has such a label except iAudio / Cowon (portable music player)... Do you?
Where this strikes me as a good approach is that the Linux kernel folks are offering to make the driver development cost irrelevant/free. So if the OS community basically puts out the vote via a common website which basically lets those of us who want to buy OS essentially vote on which components to ask the Linux Kernel folks to make drivers for first, then a company can assess whether or not to "play ball". And if the manufactures play ball, then it is up to those of us to make it profitable and desirable for them to do so in the future by voting with our wallets for Linux components and away from WinXX.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
you sir, have managed to collect the *essence* of slashdot in one simple sentence. salute.
In any market calculation, a Linux Laptop gets counted twice. You usually can't buy a good Linux Laptop without getting Windows and a bunch of adware pre-installed on it. Every single laptop I've purchased in the last 6 or 7 years came with Windows, but in every case, I only bought laptops with hardware which worked under Linux, since that's what I really want to run. Statistically speaking, a market analysis would show this as one purchase of Windows and one Linux user, when really the presence or absence of Linux support forms the entirety of my purchase decision.
So yes, market share analysis is missing a bit of information due to the constraints of how hardware is currently purchased.
People who fall into the trap of installing and using proprietary video card drivers then later discover that their video card (which still works fine) is no longer "supported" by the latest driver update would disagree with you that "Video cards are already well-supported by their manufacturers.".
I believe this kind of thing happens more than others know, particularly as GNU/Linux distributors that distribute proprietary software make it easier for users to acquire proprietary software (as I understand Ubuntu is working on). Users shouldn't be left without their software freedom, nor should they have to choose between updating their system kernel and using their video card.
Making users helpless and keeping them separate is no way to live. Users need software freedom now.
Digital Citizen
And they're straight up lying if they claim that no one buys those things. Anecdotally, I've got a Laserjet 5550n behind me and to the left for which we would buy a duplex module if it were offered.
Didn't you just prove HP's point, then?
That happened to me with my Radeon. At that point, the open source driver supported my card, and I didn't have to futz around with building kernel modules every time I tinkered with my kernel.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
HP LaserJet 1300
I think it's discontinued now but when i bought it about 3~4 years ago, I got it for around $300 new. it's fast - about 20ppm - and has worked flawlessly. we've got about 10 of those puppies at work. been working fine.
brother makes a similar type of printer. don't recall the model. but we bought about 2-3 of those for work at ~$200 apiece.
all of 'em have the postscript RIP(?).
For many people, they buy the cheap model from the big nationwide mass-market retailer. In those computers, all of that unnecessary drag on the processor (along with swapping, since they rarely had more than 256MB as of about a year ago) slows the system down so much that it would be faster to use an old manual typewriter.
In my experience, WinModems typically max out in the 40Kbits to 48Kbits range, and sometimes as slow as 36Kbits. Just by getting a real modem, speeds pick up noticeably. And these are the largest group of consumers--they buy these crappy systems because they don't know any better.
The printers that constantly run processes in the background are eating up real cycles and real memory. It is observable when someone has two or three printers installed, each with its own background processes, and the person is trying to write a report while doing research on the Web. Switching from browser to word processor can take two or three minutes because of all the swapping going on.
But now *you* do know better, so if someone asks you, make sure they get a real modem, network card, and printer, with the necessary intelligence built into the peripheral itself.
Just a quick note to let everyone one know that I managed to grab a short interview with Greg about this for tonights (9:30pm AEDST (UTC+1100) episode of Open Source On The Air.
Details can be found here
Back in the late '90s there were a large number of products that, among other things, advertised Linux support ... Then Microsoft recognized Linux as a legitimate threat. About the time that Microsoft started signing drivers, I saw advertisements of Linux support quietly disappear from hardware boxes.
Yes, it may just be coincidence, but to have manufacturers drop support for a growing market is pretty suspicious to my mind.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
Which is why we ought seriously to investigate the use of force to obtain drivers.
Send the CEO of nVidia a lock of his daughter's hair in the post, with a warning that next time it will be a finger unless he supplies you with the necessary information to write Linux drivers for all existing nVidia cards. Then we'll see if or not these people think keeping their Source Code secret is worth the life of someone near and dear to them. Hell, cut off and send the finger even -- it might motivate him a bit more. "Hand over the source or the kid gets it!" For real, this time.
...someone is going to say that Linux wouldn't have this problem if only there were a standard binary driver interface in the kernel.
If so, please feel free to copy and paste my pre-prepared answer :
Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, FUCK OFF!
And die.
Dear Greg, rather than waiting until Ralink crosses your blog, I'll point you immediately to http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/ The rt2x00 team is developing Linux drivers for RT2500 and other Ralink wireless chipsets since over 2 years. Yet no release happened since over a year, so one wonders how long it will take until a stable version is completed, integrated in the main Linux tree, and in distros. If over 15 months ago, you would have specifically buyed a barebone laptop in order to be able to choose a wireless card with good [potential] Linux support, and chosen one which had already GPL drivers from Ralink iself, was also used by tens of thousands of Linux users, and was Linux Journal's 2005 "Product of the Year", you would definitely wish that the Linux community had made this announcement sooner...or just that it stopped wating until someone knocks at the door. NB: Despite the previous sentence, I am not blaming the Linux community. I just think Greg needs to be brought back to the ground.