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."

Comments

Good next step

[lemmen]

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.

But how do they implement that NDA?

[elteck]

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?

Re:How many

[scotch]

Please don't feed the trolls.