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Clearance For New Linux Wireless Driver
An anonymous reader writes "The Software Freedom Law Center has given legal clearance to OpenHAL, a wireless component for Linux, based on their pro-bono review of the code. This announcement dispels allegations of infringement on Atheros' proprietary HAL software. 'We believe that this outcome will clear the way for eventual acceptance of a new wireless driver into the Linux kernel,' said John Linville, the Linux kernel maintainer for wireless networking."
I was really sad to hear that Eben Moglen was leaving the FSF. I knew about SFLC, but always wondered if they would do much. On the contrary, it seems like SFLC has actually been active and done some great things in its short time as an organization. The conservancy is a great idea too!
You'll get no specifications from the manufacturers and it will take no effort to destroy all your efforts by just releasing a firmware upgrade what will render your OSS driver pretty much useless.
According to TFA, they did a code audit on both the open and closed source drivers. That's a bit more rigorous than an opinion on a patent, IMO.
Actually, it sucks arse.
I have three different Broadcom chipsets supposedly handled by the drivers. One of them works well. The other two barely at all, with lots of dropouts and other problems. This on several different distros too. I invariably end up using ndiswrapper for stability and reliability.
I looked up the case you mentioned, and you're right that Kodak lost the case, however, Kodak's pre-lawsuit opinions likely saved them from damages due to willful infringement. In a patent case, treble damages are awarded for willfull infringement -- that's where the money is. While an infringer will have to cease infringement, and will likely have to purchase a license, only a willful infringer pays treble damages as punishment. By seeking outside opinions, Kodak likely saved themselves treble damages, which would have amounted to hundreds of millions of dollars.
So, I would argue it's a stretch to say those opinions did not help them one little bit -- they helped Kodak immensely, even though they didn't win the case.
(Also, if anyone wants to look it up, the case actually began in the late 70s, and damages weren't decided until 90-91. The damages opinion went unreported in the Supplement, but is available on Westlaw.)
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Kodak saved $1.8 BILLION dollars by hiring lawyers to conduct thorough reviews of the technology and patents.
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If you willfully infringe someone's patent, you can get up to three times the damages you incurred. This is to dissuade people from knowingly and intentionally infringing on someone's patent and simply paying actual damages. (This would be a kind of forced royalty.) Having attorneys analyze your product, search for relevant patents, and study both then swear up and down you do not infringe argues against willful infringement.
Kodak's attorneys were wrong when they said the products didn't infringe, but they conducted a thorough review in good faith. The court found that Polaroid was not entitled to treble damages on these facts because there was no showing of willful infringement.
Up until 2004, failure to obtain opinion of counsel was a sign that you willfully infringed a patent you knew about. Now the lack of an opinion of counsel is just a sign you willfully infringed.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=ht
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Try here.
http://linux-wless.passys.nl/
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
If you care about having high-quality open-source drivers for your wireless card, it's a no-brainer... go with Ralink or Realtek-based cards, since those companies have gone out of their way to provide specs and help write drivers. Or even Atheros or Intel, which have also worked hard to satisfy the open-source communities, though both have kept a proprietary core out of regulatory compliance worries (that's what OpenHAL is about, replacing the proprietary core of the Atheros drivers).
But *definitely* don't choose Broadcom if you want open-source drivers. They haven't lifted a finger or provided a single spec to help the open-source community. The imperfect state of bcm43xx drivers is thanks to the arduous and time-consuming task of reverse engineering. That it works well for a lot of people is a testament to the incredible talent and hard work of the bcm43xx developers, and I for one am very thankful to them.
By the way, this site is a really useful database of wireless support under Linux. You can look up a specific brand and model of wireless card and find out what chipset it uses and how well it's supported.
My bicyles
Have you even looked at what cards are on the list? Take a look att if=USB
http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_hostif.php?hos
at please tell me which of these cards are actually available in stores!
My guess will be a zydas or ralink* stick is eaiest to find. But there are only 211 "green" cards. 77 of them are Prism based (very hard to find IMHO). Further 9 are Orinoco and Hermes (really old stuff). IOW it is mostly old stuff.
But I just manages to find a store that has the Belkin 802.11g F5D7050 so maybe it has some uses after all.
For those who don't understand the word treble in this context (as it has nothing to do with music) it means triple. I had to look it up to be sure. If you mean triple, why not just say triple? It's a word everyone understands.
silly mods...
You are wrong.
1) fwcutter just cuts out the firmware. Most wlan drivers today need firmware. It is completely different from using ndiswrapper. firmware doesn`t run on your cpu, a windows otoh does. The reason they made fwcutter is that the license on the firmware probably doesn't allow redistribution (or, that there is really no license info available). So in contrast to what you are posing, the drivers are native.
2) Latest versions start to become much better on the few chipsets I own. Some are PPC, so forget about ndiswrapper.