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Novell Makes Linux Driver Project a Reality
apokryphos writes "Novell have relaunched the Linux Driver Project by dedicating well-known kernel developer Greg KH to work on the project full-time. Greg KH writes:
'My employer, Novell, has modified my position to now allow me to work full time on this project. Namely getting more new Linux kernel drivers written, for free, for any company that so desires. And to help manage all of the developers and project managers who want to help out...They really care about helping make Linux support as many devices as possible, with fully open-source drivers.'"
I'm not sure how much just one developer can do, but props to Novell nonetheless.
On one side I'm happy to hear of this effort, OTOH I'm concerned that this is one of the vendors with an alliance to a multiple convictions monopolist.
As drivers are pretty much kernel level activities I would like to see assurances that such development is clean and cannot be used to manufacture truth behind the nebulous IP infringement claims which have stopped in countries where you can't make such statements without having to prove it (which says IMHO a lot in itself).
So, IMHO the news deserves a welcome with caution..
Insert
Just curious, but where is the list touting the manufacturers that stepped forward and provided documentation (and consequently which new hardware is supported). Be nice to see what progress this campaign has made and is continuing to make.
Also it would be nice to get a list going of which hardware I should look forward to.
Georgia Tech, the leader in Chia(tm) technology.
Here is an example of a for profit company giving something back. Novell may not be on everyone's favorite list, but there are plenty of companies that actually see the potential for profit by doing things that are helpful. I was personally annoyed at how 9/10 posts in the TomTom thread were simply "they make more money by not being good citizens" posts, and yet those posters intentionally ignored how doing good things can lead to a stronger bottom line, even if the path is not as direct, by building community interest. Anyway, I'm going to make it a point to shun penny wise and pound foolish companies here on out. Start flaming.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
The project is for developing drivers with manufacturer support. So if you can get the manufacturer of your favourite device to work with the developers then, sure, you can 'nominate' that device.
How we know is more important than what we know.
What with so many people disgusted with Vista compatibility issues, there is a real opportunity here.
Heck, even when people "downgrade" (upgrade?) to XP, I've heard there can be missing or broken driver issues with some new hardware. Companies figured they would only write Vista drivers for certain new parts.
Linux has made many advances in "average Joe" usability. Combine that with hardware compatibility so good that Linux "works out of the box" BETTER than windows, and Windows starts to look a lot less like it's worth all that money. This could be huge for "mainstream" users.
Here's hoping that the next computer my Grandmother gets is windows free.
"Cheeze it!" - Bender
Novell always hires GPL developers on part-time basis for developing small Linux projects which are eventually release with GPL licenses (because they're developed with GPL software anyway). Many freelance GPL developers here (China and Hong Kong) support their living by taking these jobs.
So it isn't much a news at all. Anyway, gratz Greg. ^_^
..nowadays than just 3 years ago. However, I don't have any particularly egzotic hardware, or need for top-speed from my graphic card (you can tell I am not into 3D gaming).
However, where I do feel the pain is, when Linux doesn't recognize my soundchip. That drives me bonkers, and it's still a running concern. I guess Linux users are not into music that much. I just tried booting the newest Xubuntu live CD, and my otherwise puny soundchip wasn't detected. (worked fine on the laptop, though, so it's hit and miss) I hope Novell's efforts will bring at least a small improvement in this area.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
As much as I applaud the driver initiative by GregKH, this development approach is flawed, because a handful of developers has neither the throughput nor the expertise needed to write high-quality drivers for the great many devices of vastly different kinds that are released every day. The people who made a device know its ins and outs better than a kernel developer, because that's what they specialize in; they can squeeze more performance out of it. Therefore, drivers should be developed by the manufacturer of the device in consultation with kernel developers, not vice versa.
Still, even this kind of collaboration on the manufacturers' part is better than pretending that Linux doesn't exist at all.
Does any one see the connection?
Novell Makes Linux Driver Project a Reality?
AMD Releases Register Specs For R5xx And R6xx?
Does this mean that the "Novell have released a first alpha quality Open Source drivers"
will go to beta, and then GM?
The combination of these two ideas, only two days apart.
I would *LOVE* to see 2D acceleration on my X1300 in Linux.
That would be so cool!
> where is the list touting the manufacturers that stepped forward and provided documentation
... ie. free advertising. They rub our backs, we rub theirs.
That's an excellent idea. A simple wiki page would suffice, providing links to each manufacturer, their open docs page, and their sources page, if any. Use a wiki so that people can add their own entries, and so that the admin can revert abuse easily.
As the list grows, people would start looking there before buying equipment, and to not be listed on it would become a problem for manufacturers by giving their competitors a boost. Don't list manufacturers who don't offer this, as listing them in red might get their lawyers agitated. Omitting them is enough.
Oh, and provide links below it to one or two products produced by each of these friendly manufacturers
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Of course there is plenty potential for profit by doing things that are helpful. But you are comparing apples and oranges. Novell is helping Linux development for free, because Linux actually also is a Novell product that helps them sell a lot of other stuff in their "natural home market". TomTom sells to end-users, most of whom couldn't care less about Linux. Hell, TomTom developers could even he actively belping Linux kernel development, without it impacting the company's sales (I've seen this happen in my own company). I personally always refuse to buy computer-related goodies that do not work with Linux, but you need to look at it from the company's point of view: suporting Linux users will inevitably cost them something and if that is not compensated by extra income, be it from sales or goodwill, it makes perfect business sense for them not to do it. That's irrespective of how much us zealots would want things to be done differently.
Linux user since early January 1992.
Also make sure they disclose documentation so that _all_ free OSes can have free drivers, not just linux.
I gave up with the idea of an useful sig...
Exceot that once you have released a driver under GPL v2, then anyone can hack it to remove the DRM check. Tivo-isation is about how the hardware behaves, not the software.
Pardon? you do realise that EVERYONE infringes on EVERYONE elses patents. Almost every damn thing immaginable has been patented. Hell, I'd be surprised if this very post code hasn't been patented by some twit running a nameless patent harvesting company in some hick state.
Simply signing a patent agreement with Microsoft is no more an admission on Novells part than on Microsofts part regarding who is infridging what - and shock bloody horror, it might mean a working silverlight implementation on *NIX.
If you hate Silverlight - whats the alternative? the Linux hating outfit called Adobe who refuses to give Linux desktop the time of day - both in their crap support for Flash, their refusal to either work with wine to improve product support or port their applications to *NIX. The only thing left is JavaFX which is highly unlikely to take off given Sun's rank reputation for producing cruddy IDE's that make developing for their platform as painful as being kicked in the balls with steel cap boots.
Get over yourselves, this is a good thing at a time that may be most crucial. Vista has been widly viewed as bad. And unless Microsoft comes out with something new in the next 2 years the Linux/Mac community has all that time to show the regular Windows users why they should switch to Linux/Mac.
Mac is winning, not because it's better but because of Linux is an incoherent mess of dozens of distribution with no clear reason why to select one over the other.
You want mom and pop and aunt Rose to use it? Well here is your chance. don't fuck up!
Not me! The problem is that in this case a single size does NOT fit all! There's a need for at least three and likely five "environments" on the desktop. Here's how I figure.
The first two are the "big two". Fairly heavyweight, the problem here is that the approaches differ and "never the twain shall meet." Then there's XFCE, lighter weight while still being rather featureful, and for the really "resource challenged" (read as <384MB memory "LiveCD", <256MB memory running of of writable media, these days, or 92MB/64MB if you wish to be really conservative), something line IceWM. Finally, some find ION type WMs more to their liking. For them, the standard WM/environments simply aren't organized or efficient enough, and can never work.
Focusing again on the "big two", the problem is as follows. The GNOME approach (characterized from the opposing viewpoint, and obviously drastically simplifying) seems to be that in most cases there is "one single best UI choice", and that if there's a split as to which way is best, it's simply because the "correct" UI presentation hasn't yet been found. Their approach to customization is minimalistic, the less setting there are to confuse the user, the better. The common complaint from the "control freak" (me) and/or "power user" and/or "developer" (Linus) is that tools and choices that should be there, tweaks that should be possible, simply aren't... at least from the GUI... and this they/we find EXTREMELY frustrating!
The perfect example is the UI elements color chooser applet. Even MS has one, yet GNOME for years somehow didn't find it necessary. I'm not talking about just a color chooser applet, sure they had that, but one couldn't use it to do something as simple as choosing the background and text color of a command button, without choosing an entire theme and changing all sorts of unrelated stuff at the same time! I'm not sure if they ever got one or not (at least in GNOME-core, I must assume someone has implemented an option applet to do it), but from my viewpoint, that's so basic a required functionality that I can't consider a desktop environment even half developed without it! Of course, in KDE, it's the colors control panel applet, control panel, right where one would expect it, shipped in kdebase, again, right where one would expect it. It has existed since at least KDE 2.x.
Contrast the "if you don't find our imposed choice best you obviously don't know what's good for you" approach of GNOME with the KDE approach, which could be characterized (hopefully even handedly simplifying/exaggerating) as "if there's a choice in UI behavior, program all possible choices and expose them as an option for the user to choose." The common complaint from the "I just want it to work" crowd is that all those options are confusing and just get in the way of actually getting things done. They find this confusing and frustrating too, I suppose in equal measure to the power users and etc trying to work with GNOME.
The problem is that in terms of basic UI approaches, as I said, "never the twain shall meet." Sure, there can be some working together to make an app from one desktop work well on and function somewhat like the other if it finds itself in that environment, and there are projects to that end. However, I've come to realize that the two approaches are both necessary and fill a need, and that if either desktop project were to suddenly collapse, the developers on the other would likely be first in line donating to get a new one started! Why? Simply this. As long as the folks taking the other approach have their own sandbox to play in, they won't be trying to change the rules in and screw up ours! I'd hate to have GNOME users and devs trying to "simplify" KDE to their liking, removing all the tweaking ability many KD
Duncan
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master,
and if you use the program, he is your master."
R Stallman
That was my initial reaction, but then I poked around on the project wiki and noticed that they were specifically trying to get GPLv2 licensed drivers. Then I remembered that Greg K-H was one of the developers who tried to fuck up the release of GPLv3 and the bits all clicked into place. This is Novell trying to ensure that they have a supply of GPLv2 drivers available so that they can continue their filthy pact with Microsoft which will be finished if most people release their work as GPLv3.
This is a threat to open source, since Novell may just add duhbious terms to the drivers' licenses. Or purpotedly add MS code to them so they are the only ones able to legally distribute them.
Some stuff before the Novell apologists come to bash me:
- Thanks to Novell's deal, the only distro able to legally include moonlight is SUSE enterprise, you are right, not even OpenSUSE, and they say moonlight is open source, sure it is licensed open source but due to 'patent issues' only novell can distribute it, Don't believe me? It is something that both Miguel Icaza and a Novell guy called Bruce have publically accepted, hope a google
- Novell is now actively being a predator spreading FUD and lies about other distros and faking numbers to show how their "superior windows integration" (which is null) is a competitive advantage.
- Novell has accepted MS' proposal of effectively turning Linux into a windows program, so that people can easily migrate their Linux servers to MS' servers, they have accepted that only Linux is going to be virtualized, and 0 virtualization of windows on Linux, Yeah, this is the "open source supporter" Novell, turning Linux into a second class operating system.
- Novell is actually the only company that will support OOXML, oddly enough not even MS would support it if it was approved as an standard, fun?
Denying that Novell's deal is a threat is like denying water is composed of Hydrogen , if you prefer Novell over Linux and open source, friging accept it, but we are growing tired of people that keep their blind Novell fanboyism and pretend they do not want to destroy Linux for their own convenience, they want to make their own propietary, MS dependent OS out of open source projects.Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
...many thanks for the wooden horse.
We are of course grateful that you've finally come around to our way of thinking but as I'm sure you're already aware, we had the advantage and would have won eventually.
Anyway, we're now off to celebrate to excess with lots of wine and eager ladies. Hope there are no hard feelings.
P.S. Take no notice of Helen and Cassandra, we think your gift is beautiful.
Oh, lighten up, I'm just kidding.
A hundred and twenty characters ought to be enough for anyone...