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ProjectUDI spec goes 1.0

Posted by Hemos on from the getting-win-modem-drivers-written dept.

PHroD writes "Project UDI today announced the release of the UDI (Uniform Driver Interface) 1.0 specs. This hopefully means great strides in new drivers for all our favorite obscure hardware! " They've got most of the 1.0 materials out-grab the official specs, in PDF, from their site.

3 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Now just a minute... by Millennium · · Score: 3

    I see a lot of people saying how this is a Bad Thing because it encourages binary-only drivers. Now, perhaps I'm just clueless, but how the hell does it do that? It's nothing more than a standardized API, kind of like X, or glibc (if you count that as an API, which I do), or any number of other bits of Linux software.

    I know, I'm probably begging to be whacked with the Clue Stick, but could someone please enlighten me on how open standards discourage Open-Source?

  2. Re:Linux driver interface by Josh+Turpen · · Score: 3

    Uhm, you completely skipped my comment on Linux driver compatibility.

    It also help developers. They would only have to--or at least should have to--test the driver on one OS for it to function on multiple OS's.

    Take for example FreeBSD. AFAIK FreeBSD has a module that allows it to run Linux binary kernel modules like they were it's own. Isn't this the same function that UDI is trying to accomplish? The developer could test their driver on Linux and know it would work on BSD as well.

    Now, vendors could create binary only linux drivers, but the fast pace of linux development makes it impractical. Most modules need a recompile when you upgrade the kernel. That would require the vendor to have a recompiled driver for every incremental kernel version.

    ...Remember that hardware manufacturers had no reason whatsoever to publish specs for Linux...

    Huh? When linux was in it's infancy, no vendor published specs purely for the sake of getting a linux driver. Now, with 10M+ users, that's a pretty good reason to publish specs. It sells more hardware. More to the point, they will soon have to publish specs to be competetive. I wonder how many /. readers have bought a TNT2 based video card because they knew it would have good support due to open specs? Or what about Matrox?

    Again, UDI can only hurt linux. Contrary to what most /. pundits will tell you, Windows in itself is not unstable. Third party drivers for Windows are what make it crash. Because of this, Linux will lose one of it's best assets; stability. Also, what happens when you want to run linux on non-x86 hardware? There goes linux portability.

    Binary only drivers are bad. :)

    --
    --- A Jesus Fish eating a Darwin Fish only proves Darwin's point.
  3. Clue Stick by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3
    Obviously no one here has a) looked at the spec, and b) written any device drivers or other low level software.

    UDI does not encourage binary only drivers , nor does it discourage them. The goal of UDI is to provide a consistent API between drivers and kernels across all Unices (and Windows?). This is a good thing as it reduces the ammount of work that has to be done by a driver writer. Write once, cross-compile and you're done (or so the theory goes)

    I've written device drivers for Windows, RTOSes, and Linux, and device drivers and any kernel level components are rather complex beasts. Making them easier to write will only make more harwdare accesible to different OS users.