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Yet Another Linux Driver Petition
Rendus writes "Just saw this over at Linux Today, a request for people to sign the Linux drivers petition. Their goal is 2 million signatures. When I signed, I was number 20." Well I've never heard of libranet, but hopefully they'll be successful in convincing a few manufacturers to either release drivers for Linux, or the specs so we can do it.
Its a general petition.
Normally I'd say something along the lines of "dont add yourself to the petition unless there is some *real* chance of you using it" but this seems to just be a general call for drivers.
As for how useful it'll be, we'll have to wait and see.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
or just add a line to /etc/aliases
spam: nobody
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
mr writes:
And the REST of the OpenSource OS market doesn't matter?
Yes BSD matters, but this isn't a spontaneous grassroots Free Software effort. The petition is being done by Libranet, a commercial Linux distributor. Why should a company selling Linux go out of their way to publicise BSD? Are they also obligated to publicise HURD, FreeDOS, V2OS, Darwin and any of the other excellent Free OS's out there? Get real.
On the flip side, the petition is asking for specifications. Having specs available helps all Free OS's, even though they don't explicitly mention any other than Linux in the request.
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Open mind, insert foot.
Then there is the whole opensource argument that I wont even go into... why should companies opensource their drivers and specs? Do you expect Coca Cola to give you their recipe. No, I think not.
I think ESR has already made a pretty good argument in favor of hardware vendors opening their source and specs (LINK) .
Companies who spend their time replicating other companies' products, there are many, are limited to selling cheap knock-offs. You can't hope to stop them by hiding your specs and driver code, because they'll just hack away until they figure it out on their own, but why should you stop them in the first place? They're exactly where you want them--selling cheap knock-offs of old technology, while you design and market the cutting edge stuff.
slashdot broke my sig
That means that, to get 2,000,000 signatures, they need 1 out of every 20 Linux Users "out there" to sign the petition. That's a -very- high percentage. You don't see that kind of turnout in almost anything. I've been told that sales-folk will reckon on between 1 in 20 and 1 in 100 actually doing anything -of those who have said they actually would-.
1% actually being interested, and 1% of those interested actually doing anything about it seem reasonable guesstimates. That would put the total at 4,000 signatures. Somewhat less than 2,000,000, but might still be enough to persuade some companies that it's worth exploring the possibility.
That, IMHO, is about all the commitment we'll ever get, until Linux matches Windows on the desktop. But a willingness to look is light-years better than a refusal to consider, which is the way it's tended to be in the past.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Why Bother?
What struck me was this:
Linux is hampered by a lack of drivers for some pc devices, notably printers.
Who cares? For printers, use PostScript. It works, and it works well -- Adobe did good, so reward them. Instead of trying to pinch pennies to get the cheapest (in the short-term) hardware, we should support quality.
(Likewise with OpenGL, SCSI, etc. etc.)
Hardware should be designed to a common interface anyway. The more we do to encourage vendors to think that way, the better off we'll be in the long run.
Instead of whining to companies about lack of custom drivers for custom variations in common hardware, we should support those companies that create standardized, generic, open interfaces, and then stick to them. Just as we do with software, we should reward quality engineering and implementation.
If it doesn't work, then we have a fundamental problem with this "Open Source" thing anyway.
Begging does not become us.
Pick One: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~stremler/sigs/sigs.html (Note - disable Javascript first!)
I honestly don't see how the UDI is going to help. I can't help but think that it's just commercial Unix vendors waking up to the fact that Linux actually supports more hardware than any of the commercial Unixes. When was the last time you sat down at your Linux box and said, "Darn, I really wish Linux had a driver for foo. SCO Unix has a driver for foo, I wish I could use that."
It simply doesn't happen.
Intel has come up with a clever hack that would allow Unix systems to share drivers, and now they want Linuxers to actually do the grunt work and write the drivers. It would be different if Intel had a whole bunch of UDI drivers for hardware that Linux didn't already support, but they don't. They are simply hoping to tap into Linux's talent pool.
As for the Linux port to the S/390, it appears that their are actually two of them. The reasons the non-IBM version was written can be found here. The same site says that the official IBM version was done "for political reasons."
Coca-Cola is not a means to an end like software is. You need driver software to run hardware. Without the software, your hardware is pretty much useless. Charging for drivers is valid only if it goes into the production cost of the hardware. Or, in other words, if the driver is provided with the hardware when you buy it. Charging for the source of the drivers is absolutely unjustified.
In this scheme of things, one cannot really draw an analogy with Coca-Cola. But let me give it a try. Imagine that every soft-drink can only be drunk with a special straw that is dependant on the formula of the drink. Some soft-drink manufacturers provide the straw which will enable you to drink their product. Others dont, but provide you with enough info to make / buy a suitable straw. Coca-Cola on the other hand will sell their products to anyone, but will sell straws only to bug-eyed aliens from Mars, and absolutely refuses to provide info on which straws to buy, or how to make a suitable straw. Is this situation acceptable? I think not!
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
I agree that if a company releases its blueprints for the hardware and source code, there will indeed by cheap knock offs.
I would further say that if their interesting gizmo kept all a secret, it will be a puzzle and a challenge to see what makes it tick. This results in a second generation engineering job, not the cheap clone job of the disclosed product. I'd venture to say that those who hold secrets will face some competition with improved products that are missing the bugs. On the other side of the fence, the manufacturer who disclosed the prints only needs to appeal to the quality buying public and sell their brand.
I used to repair televisions and VCR's (when they really were worth some money.) Schematics were available. When we traced down the problem to make repairs (easy with the information,) we often found the weak spots in design. This information was passed on to the company. Better designs followed later.
There were a few manufacturers that were impossible to reach to get any repair information or parts. Not surprisingly, those manufacturers were quickly forgotten about as their products quickly left the market. Who's going to buy stuff that is unmaintainable over and over again? With the exception of Windows, this is rare.
they don't need my email. I'm not signing unless they don't require it. And I'm not the only
one.
Make a bogus, yet legitimate email address that you never intend to read. You can email me there, the message will be received, but will pour the shiny electrons into the bitbucket recyclotron. Use the command "adduser nospam" and you have an instant throwaway account!
the server said "This account has too many processes running. Please try again later." LOL!
according to queso it's either DSBi 3.0, or IBM S/390. I think we can eliminate the mainframe.
I somehow expected it to be running Linux.
The problem is that there isn't a great pull for manufacturers to write to UDI. Most of them likely see "unsupported" OS' as a drain on their support resources, and that's a problem that needs to be fixed. It'd be nice to see RH or VA take some of that IPO money and start working on the problem. A driver support division somewhere with funding that could gain some mindshare would be cool, especially if it were non-proprietary.
FWIW, AIX ran on System/370 systems well over a decade ago, it never sold well. Try a search for AIX/370.
Paul
http://www.pauldrobertson.com
Linux is hampered by a lack of drivers for some pc devices, notably printers.
Huh? Certainly ghostscript and printing can be a bear to set up, but most printers have a number of standard protocols that they conform to - which are well described. Which printers do they have in mind?
I got the feeling from looking at their web site that these guys are just looking for business.
My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
It should be http://www.libranet.com/petition.html.
Absolute bullshit. Writing kernel-mode software - which includes true drivers plus many other driver-like entities such as filesystems - is much harder than writing user-mode fluff, for several reasons:
It's really hard to hire experienced kernel-mode developers, and when we get desperate enough to hire people without kernel experience because "they seem smart and we hope they can learn" we find two things:
We're not talking about fresh-outs here, either. People with five or six years of experience - but none of it in kernel mode - are only marginally better than kids in either of the above regards (and they cost a lot more).
Yes, people who write drivers often leave for other jobs, dumping their code on other people for maintenance. That's not because they're 18 year olds who don't have a clue, though. Au contraire; it's because driver developers always have a wealth of opportunities to choose from, and who wants to maintain old code instead of writing something new?
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
The only way hardware manufacturers will release drivers for a particular platform is if it makes financial/market sense for them to do so.
In most cases (for the more common hardware elements) it probably does, and indeed *most* companies have, even if they are not opensource.
However some of the more obscure companies will not, it doesn't make economic sense for them to do so, they have very little to gain from spending lots of money on it, they follow the 80/20 rule.
This still doesn't mean that they can't release the specs for the hardware though, particularly for older more obscure hardware. I'm suprised and dissapointed that they don't, but then again sometimes this doesn't make sense, they want you to buy the all new expensive stuff don't they, even if it wont go in your old obsolete 286.
I can't see things changing much, most of the hardware that is usefull has or will have drivers or specs released, those that don't probably never will have.
Then there is the whole opensource argument that I wont even go into... why should companies opensource their drivers and specs? Do you expect Coca Cola to give you their recipe. No, I think not.
Whoa 107 comments and I'm the first one that realized LDP now is both Linux Documentation Project and Linux Drivers Petition... We're gonna hafta start working on newer and better acronyms, or a different system of acronyms... a newer and better system.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
Your signature is number 00001711
As we count New Year's night, 10-9-8 ad finitum, we can count the petition numbers upwards to -- who knows -- 2 mil?!
Ceterum censeo Microsoftam esse delendam.
The following error was encountered:
Unable to determine IP address from host name for libranet.com
The dnsserver returned:
DNS Domain 'libranet.com' is invalid: Valid name, no data record of requested type.
OK, who hard is it to do the following (in zone file for libranet.com):
libranet.com. A 127.0.0.1
www CNAME libranet.com.
eh? I hate clueless admins.
"They'll never think to include the link without the WWW prefix, everyone knows you have to use the WWW prefix!"
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
You'll want to read the recent Kernel Traffic. The first piece is all about closed binaries on Linux, and why they'll likely not happen any time soon in a big way.
:-)
It boils down to source code and maintenance. Once the company gives out specs that let people write source code, or otherwise release source code for the device, people can go ahead and use those devices. Companies seem afraid of giving out source code. I don't know why, becuase (at least with the Linux community) the community will support/maintain the code, fix bugs, and otherwise make it work well. If the company keeps their source closed, they have to take all the responsibility and work of making the code useful onto their shoulders. Simple psuedo code & specs for devices would allow a renaissance of proper hardware support for the BSDs, Linux, Hurd, and BeOS, among others. True, BeOS is a more closed source OS, but it could also benefit from LGPL drivers
As for BSD, etc. Drivers in source form can be taken from Linux and put in the BSD kernels, as the LGPL licence is friendly about being linked with BSD licenced bits and bobs, IIRC.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I like the idea but I'm not sure a general petition would have much effect.
The company I currently work for received a request for the release of information specifically in relation to the Linux OS. The letter was also a general petition and seemed like a form letter since it didn't seemed to know what we specifically do (other than what our name specified). It was signed "The Linux Community" but nothing more specific than that.
A general petition is nice in principle, but it had pretty much no effect on how we do things for a couple of reasons (given by engineering and management).
1. Our company's hardware and software is mostly proprietary, and we've yet to see any reason to switch to Linux (not to say I personally wouldn't like to see how it would go) that would benefit us or our clients.
2. The letter really didn't identify any clients (corporate or private) specifically asking our company to change our OS or release hardware specs. Thus no actual impact on us in financially or in the PR area that we can tell.
3. The manner in witch the letter was written was not entirely pleasant. The implication of the letter seemed as if the author was accusing us of limiting our clients options in some malicious way, but again, it wasn't from any of our clients (that we know of) and wasn't specific at all.
4. Some engineering concerns have been raised about moving to an OS that we do not know much about compared to our own. Security, support and the cost of such migration weigh heavily on many minds regarding such a switch. Also concerns about trade secrets were also brought up.
The idea seems nice, but I'm not sure how much effect this will have. Our company responds much better to specific requests from clients, or groups of clients than just a general letter like we received. I believe that most companies react the same.
http://www.libranet.com/petition.html
numb
First, I think this is an excellent idea. But we must *USE* the results. I suggest sending a copy of the petition, with signatures to major manufactures. Sending a hard copy, by registered mail (which must be accepted by hand & signed for), would be even more effective.
Secondly, we should focus on a few areas where Linux is critically lacking in drivers. By critical, I mean drivers that do not exist which are stopping potential users and administrators from using Linux. As the petition web site said, printer drivers are very lacking. Also, a lack of drivers for high-end PC graphics cards game manufactures from producing big title games ("What? Linux doesn't support the new HyperWarpBlaster 512 128meg card? Why should we develop Quake VI for Linux, then?").
Hopefully XFree86 4.0 will address this issue, but the big need to is to get these companies to release Linux (and *BSD, BeOS, etc) drivers when they release Windows drivers as well.
Have I left anything out?
What came before the Big Bang? Hum, it must have outside of time...
I agree. I have a hotmail address which is soley a spam bucket. Anytime I have to register for a website or some crap, I use it. About once a month I go empty it and just keep the emails that have my pw/username things I want to keep (like Slashdot's for instance). This keeps my home email pretty free of junk.
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
As of right now (4pm GMT, 11am EST) i managed to actually register on the petition.
/. implies 500 registrations per hour, or just under 10 a minute. there is a severe bottleneck in there somewhere, probably the server being a very slow machine unable to cope with running multiple instances of perl, at a guess.
Suffice to say, the total number right now is just short of 2000. Considering the difficulty it took in actually getting in to register, the server must be oversubscribed several times over with people trying to register! however many of these are obviously being lost - 2000 in (approximately?) 4 hours the article's been live on
if someone is in a position to mirror this, on a more powerful machine, with more bandwidth, this could help bring in the signatures, striking while the iron is hot and all that.
for anyone willing to do so, i urge you to contact libranet about it - webmaster@libranet.com seems to be their only contact on this, though petition@libranet.com may also work, though i am by no means sure.
Fross
And I'll sign it when it's not slashdotted, but I put more faith in voting with my wallet. I buy hardware exclusively for Linux support and won't touch anything that I'm not sure is supported.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
>We, members of the Linux community and the computing population in general, believe that you, the manufacturers of pc computing devices, should make available to Linux developers full specifications of your devices, so that Linux compatible device drivers can be produced for your products. If you feel this information is confidential, then we ask you to write, and make freely available, drivers for your products.
And the REST of the OpenSource OS market doesn't matter?
If you are going to make a petition, or sign one, why not sign one that is can work for ALL the OpenSource OSes? Or, how about ALL the Unix market?
Why does the Linux community want to replace Micro$oft as the new monopoly?
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
X - Number of Linux Users (10M according to Wayne above)
x - Number of Linux Users who give a damn about anything other than fraggin
Y - Number who read ./ and know about this cause
y - Percentage who know to put the www ahead of the URL
Z - Site capacity factor
z - Percentage who never come back after the first "this account has too many processes running,try again later"
A - Percentage who lurk everywhere and will never "Submit" even when the dreaded button says something else
a - Length of time that story will be an Article on ./
B - residence time on "Older Stuff"
b - fudge factor
With all of these variables, I estimate that the petition count will be 75,000 by 1/1/0 when the world's computing infrastructure turns into a tangled, smoking heap. Of course, I am not a coder and just factored all of the variables in my head. I just think of stupid things, I do not make them executable.
I think that a goal of 2 million signatures might be slightly ambitious. The last article I read counted Linux users at about 10 million. That would mean that they are asking for about 20% of the entire user base to sign this petition. Even if the numbers are slightly out of wack, I think that the Borland survey got around 100 000 respondents and that was /.'d quite heavily :-)
On a better note, I hope that this does get some things going for Linux in the driver world. I really take my hat off to all the people that keep hammering at companies (Creative labs springs to mind here) to get the specs and then write the drivers so that the same companies who wouldn't help can sell more product. I know Creative have now opened the SBLive driver, but I know a lot of people went through a lot of pain and suffering to get this driver to us.
Singee number 411
ok, RMS doesn't like it for pushing binary-only drivers. so this is not a good thing for "free software", but just for the linux-community. microsoft is not going to like UDI, because one of the main advantages of windows is, that it has drivers for everything. well, anyway i guess microsoft isn't affraid as much of linux than of the unification of the unix-market in progress, around open source and linux. unix can only win against windows when 10 different unix-vendoers stop reinventing the wheel 10 times. and this is happening with apache, samba, xfree86 and somehow also linux.
solaris x86, freebsd, SCOs openserver and unixware (and soon AIX ) are all able to run linux binaries. so users can stick with their unix-of-choice and still run the bulk of linux-software. but guess for which plattform developers are going to publish their software first... and this is going to have long-term impact.
ups, well, as i'm OT anyway, doesn anybody know why IBM did port linux to S/390 and not AIX ?
PS: Linux has a pretty good driver creation model
Contrary to your belief, it is more complex than that.
I myself make Linux device drivers and I have glanced over the Windows device driver model.
Think of it like this, can you port Quake to Linux from Windows just by recompiling the source?
It is the whole library and environment and everything that has to be changed.
"Computers have really changed the world.
Before, we would tar-and-feather,
Now we tar-and-zip"
I have a dream that one day, all computers will be treated equally, despite the brand of their OS. It's about time that Linux users stood up and shouted out it one loud voice, "we will not go quietly into the night. We will not give in to stingy hardware manufacturers. We are going to go on. We are going to fight for our right to use the same hardware as everyone else. Do not bow to mighty Microsoft. For once do what is good for the community and not just what is good for your relationship with Bill Gates."
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If I remember correctly..companies get rank newbies to write drivers. NO one wants to write drivers. They hire an 18 year old to write drivers..then that 18 year old leaves. He has graduated. And drivers are an aftersight..that's why 90% of Windows drivers are buggy as hell...they're rushed...I think they're written while the product is being packed for shipping. It costs them nothing to write these drivers...why can't they just give the specs to the brave Linux martyrs who want to write them? I for one will NOT write drivers. It's not sexy enough for me :)
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.