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Update On Free Linux Driver Development
Remember the offer Greg Kroah-Hartman made earlier this year, to get Linux drivers written for free for any company that wanted them? Now an anonymous reader points us to an article up on linuxworld with an update to this program. Greg K-H, who leads the development of several kernel subsystems including USB and PCI, admits that the January offer was a bit of "marketing hype" — but says it has brought companies and developers together anyway. Twelve companies have said "yes please," one driver is already in the kernel, and five more are in the pipeline.
if he did, good for him, if he didn't he just like every other lieing software house out there.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Marketing hype or not, I'm always happy to see more hardware supported by free drivers. Thanks, Greg.
To me, the issue isn't so much drivers as patents and usability.
My daughter's mp3 player didn't need any special drivers, because it's simply a standard keychain drive that happens to be able to play mp3's. However, she totally couldn't figure out how to use it on her ubuntu box. There was one problem after another. Ubuntu tried to do the right thing by popping up a gui app when she connected it, but then we couldn't get the gui app to do what we wanted to do. Part of the problem was that getting the mp3 codec to work was a pain, and that springs directly from the fact that mp3 is patented.
My Brother HL-1440 laser printer is 100% supported in Linux. Brother hired the CUPS developers to write GPL-licensed drivers for all their printers. Joy! Unfortunately, I've run into one usability problem after another, all of which are basically problems with the usability of CUPS. I know I'm not the only person in the world who thinks CUPS is a pain, because I've seen other people criticize it for problems that are the same ones I'm experiencing. For instance, CUPS remembers too much of its state, and when it freaks out (e.g., printer spewing page after page of garbage), it's difficult to get CUPS back into a known-good state.
Find free books.
one developer = Theo de Raadt.
competing open source operating system = OpenBSD
criticized = profanity
So to rewrite the sentence so it actually make sense:
While Theo de Raadt, has slung profanities at the NDA approach, he is free to write a driver for OpenBSD if he wants by using the Linux driver as documentation, but he best not copy any of the code from the Linux driver if he wants to avoid having to GPL it (which he almost certainly does).
Which makes this comment: "The drivers are generally better written than the specs," Kroah-Hartman says. make a lot more sense. But what the hell, I'll translate that too:
Theo, stop moaning about specs.. these companies are not going to give us blueprints to the damn hardware.. and whatever they do give us is going to be confidential. That's the reality. Deal with it. If you refuse to enter into a non-disclosure agreement with these companies then don't complain when the only documentation you have is a Linux kernel driver. The specs aint that great anyway.
Or, at least, that's what I read.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Uhhh.. no he wasn't. He wasn't lying at all.
Why would you feel the need to post a "translation" when you have no idea what you are talking about?
The fact that people are willing to write Open Source software without charging a fee for their services is hardly a new concept, but Greg did the smart thing of treating it like it is and, in doing so, attracted the attention of people who thought that it wasn't the case.
This was one of the biggest problems with the Free Software movement before Open Source came along.. no-one talked about the benefits that businesses could get from the community. For a while, no-one talked about anything else, and then it went quiet again. RMS will tell you that we need to talk about freedom. I happen to agree, but we also need to talk about the practical advantages of open software development too.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The list of primary hardware is relatively short when you consider what is making real penetration. If the 12 that asked for drivers are any of the larger companies in the market, it could be a big deal. It would be like if Broadcom were to come to their door and ask for real drivers that work... that right there would cover most newer laptops.
I wonder if support could get out to little groups who are trying hard. I personally have a webcam with no driver and the group trying to develop one just doesn't seem to be there enough. If someone is offering this support then it would be nice if he found a group like this and helped out. It would be nice to have a website that brings together all drivers that are being worked on and make them easy to find for someone who really wants to help. Here is the driver I was talking about by the way: http://www.actiongames.co.uk/m560x/
Utinam me logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant.
Seriously, I don't know crap about kernel development, but:
1) I knew the answer to your question since the first time I even tried to compile a kernel. By "compile a kernel", I mean run make menuconfig, flip through idiot proof menus and say yes when it tells me to.
2) You proposed a bunch of dumb ideas implying that the people who actually do know how to develop one are idiots.
3) asking questions in a dick way and then appending a question mark in no way indicates humility, or even politeness.
Seriously, asking dumb questions is fine, but *you* need to actively treat them as dumb questions if you want them to be treated as legitimate questions in a problem space in which you're ignorant. Don't treat the people you want answers from as dumb preemptively.
It's too bad that Netgear does not specify on their web site the chipset that is used for that hardware. One thing that drives me insane about wireless adapters is that there is usually no indication on the packaging or website what chipset is used because the hardware manufacturers don't necessarily use the same chipset for a given model. One must dig very deep to find out what chipset goes with a given hardware revision of a model and pray to FSM that the hardware revision is printed on the packaging. Otherwise, there is no guarantee what chip will be in the thing and one only finds out after it gets unpacked. Furthermore, it would be nice if Linux were mentioned on Netgear's list of supported operating systems to give a little more assurance to new Linux users who are actively trying to find supported hardware but just don't know where to look. Perhaps these details will be sorted out in the future.
didn't know Theo was the party involved.
;-)
Heck, the OP might not "know" that (maybe he does) but I barely even noticed that I read the summary more or less how he translated it
That's very relevant to why, while I use Linux for my web, file and database servers, when it comes to my firewalls it's OpenBSD. *Every* *fucking* *time*.
Yes, Theo can be abrasive. Yes, he's an absolutist on a lot of topics. Absolutely yes, that's the type of person I'll trust for the security of my network and my business. I'll install a binary blob driver for my desktop so I can run games, but security is not a game.
Given that the primary focus of his distribution is security, he's 100% absolutely *right* to refuse to allow binaries which he and his team can not audit to the extent that they do every other part of their releases.
So, they might be behind on support for some hardware, but when it's done, your confidence in its security is rightfully higher.
So, it's not just that he doesn't want it GPL. He doesn't trust people whose goal isn't security to write his code for him. He sure as shit isn't going to put his reputation and the security of the people who trust his OS in large part because of that reputation in the hands of some third party. So, maybe a lot of people think he has a reputation as a dick, but let's see them go up against him purely in a security context. They've had issues, but vulnerability for vulnerability he wins against damn near anything else. In the context of anything a normal person could get ahold of, I don't think anything else is even in the same league as OpenBSD. Not Linux, sure as hell not Windows.
Security and useability are in an inverse relationship. Some people are willing to adjust their balance on that scale and that's fine. A lot of good things can come out of that. It is absolutely a great thing that there is somebody out there who refuses to shift it away from security too.
So, from what you say:
You're fine with firmware that's soldered onto the board as a non-FRU mask-programmed ROM, but if it's loaded as a vendor-supplied blob that can (at least in principle) be updated as issues are identified, that's bad?
Interesting tradeoff...
John.
It's easy to imagine a Microsoft exec saying "Nice driver they made for your hardware. But it would be a shame if the device didn't work under Windows anymore, wouldn't it?"
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Let's rephrase this...
There has been enough fuss recently over "Vista-Certified" graphics drivers that didn't really work well with Vista. So all you need is a driver certification plan that pretty much can't possibly be met in every detail. Then go ahead and be relaxed about the certification - most of the time. When you come across a recalcitrant hardware vendor who provides drivers and/or documentation to Linux, it's time to insist on dotting all I's and crossing all T's.
I've suggested a similar possibility in the old 55MpH days on the New York State Thruway. The official speed limit was 55MpH, but the average speed on the road was somewhere above 65MpH. Nearly everyone on the road was a lawbreaker. So at that point, you can use whatever other criteria you wish, and know that whoever you choose to pull over is breaking at least the speed limit. I have no suspicion or evidence that this "selective law enforcement" was actually happening, but never liked the mere possibility.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Car analogy:
The last time I used a car, I had to hand crank it myself to start it. It was completely unacceptable!
a few replies later...
From the replies, I'm glad to hear this problem fixed, but approx. 70 years ago, it was a well-known limitation of cars.
Seriously, you make broad criticisms and then admit you really don't know the current state of things? How fair is that?
Next time, be honest about the last time you used the system, state your concerns about how the system behaved then, and then ask if your experience is still relevant.
*sigh* back to work...
Eventually you give up, tear out CUPS entirely, and install the Berkeley LPD, which works perfectly 100% of the time despite being a horrific mess of incomprehensible spaghetti code.
If you haven't had this experience, you lucked out, friend. But many of us weren't so lucky. I suspect CUPS is way too complicated, and has emergent behaviour that the developers can't get a grip on.