I've made two little patches, one for the kernel and one for a user space application. Both were't really that significant at all, but I got feedback for both of them with suggestions...
<irony>
Ah look, it's our friend from the nvnews forum. Didn't you write there a few months ago that you thought open source drivers can't be anything but sh*tty? Glad to see you around here, matey.
</irony>
I think someone already pointed out 5 months ago that the drivers no longer contain that code. Of course I have no idea if that's true. What I can say is that many people asked either for the source to be released or for specifications of the hardware so that open source drivers could be made. That wouldn't concern stuff like your S3TC texture compression I'd say.
You've been debunking all those requests with your it-all-works-on-my-pc attitude, blissfully unaware of the possibility that other users might have other experiences. In fact, one gets the impression from your posts that you're an opponent of Open Source and that you think that anything free (as in speech) has to suck. I wonder, why are you not using Windows then? NVidia's drivers work beautifully there (for the most part) and you don't have to hear those Open-Source-The-Drivers requests anymore.
And get that into your head: You're not the measure of everything, and other people might have different requirements than you. Now kindly go troll someplace else.
As I see it, you link your GPLed work to some proprietary work. There's hardly any base for calling this a violation of the GPL. If normal binary-only drivers are in a grayzone, than your zone must be #FEFEFE. I wouldn't worry about legal implications here too much.
Besides, I think this discussion is mostly aimed at manufacturers - which indeed have a choice wether or not to include everything as source code. On the other side, anyone who disses you for doing what you do is clearly a moron. I'm sure the great majority of users appreciates your ongoing effords - most likely even the evangelists. Otherwise your driver wouldn't have made it into the kernel:)
Of course you can argue that this is a two-way relation, and that users probably would no longer buy those products if there's no support for linux. And since the linux userbase is growing constantly, that might prove to be a bigger problem for the manufacturer.
Reading all the comments here I simply can't understand why so many people are so hardheaded. Don't you see / understand that to make Linux an OS with great support for a LOT of hardware, you have to convince hardware vendors their drivers will not be part of a GPL-case? Apparently not.
Consider this: If I wanted to use a system where everything's closed source, what do I need linux for? I could just as well use Windows. And as many previous posters have pointed out, if you explicitely allow binary-only drivers, you discourage manufacturers from making their drivers available as source code. It's how the market works. Manufacturers never make unnecessary concessions.
It's my understanding that since the information traditionally included in.h files (excepting perhaps inline'd code) is not considered copyrightable, since all it does is define data types and methods, it does not implemeent them.
Not 100% correct, I'm afraid. Many include files contain macros, which are indeed code. Thus, if you include such an include file and use one of the macros, you have a derived work, at least to a certain extend.
The firmware is more a part of the device than of the driver for the device. It's practically the device's OS, in a way. It is generally not linux-based, except in a few cases and thus does not fall inside the scope of this discussion. Yes, the firmware might be uploaded by the driver, but you could just as well consider it pure data the driver handles.
Concerning your statement about being stuck with WLANs with 'static' firmware - I can't quite follow that. I've just recently worked with WLAN cards that had their firmware uploaded on every bootup...
I have the unprovable itch that some of these same people who are bashing his as-yet unanounced plans for moonbase 1 would have rooted and cheered if certain other presidents had made this same decision.
When being confronted with a statement made by a politician, it is always helpful to ask several questions:
Who said it?
What did they say?
Why did they say it?
When did they say it?
Who said it? Someone who is in trouble. Someone who is afraid his reelection won't go as smoothly as he'd like. Someone who's actions so far led to two wars, at least one for which the reasons supplied were - if I may say so - at least a little bit shady. Not to mention a couple of interior problems in the US.
What was his statement? Something that can at best be called very populistic. A proposition that wakes feelings of grandeur and national pride in many people, but is far from being of any real use, military, economically or scientifically and will cost an amount of money that would suffice to put an end to world hunger.
Why and when did he make that proposition? Left as an excercise to the reader.
Would I approve of this if Clinton said it? Well. It surely makes a difference in as sofar as the economical and social situation was different (read: better). It's still call it a waste of money though, and that even though I am fond of space travel. But as long as our "domestic" problems aren't solved, we should not waste resources on effords like this. Just my $.02
Also u forgot to mention his real name, Olorin. And that he is the wisest of the Maia. And that he used to live in the woods of Lorien in Valinor, the dwellings of the Vala Irmo.
The StrongARM and MIPS architectures never had such a strong appeal as now:>
Seriously, if this becomes reality and in the very unlikely event that nothing can be done about it, I'd probably move to a different architecture, perhaps even Macintrash:) Might even give OS X a try. My only point of critizism about Apple products is, they're overprized. Ah well.
You must be kidding. I bought one of their timeport phones and it was the total suckage. I asked a couple friends why that was, and they gave me that pittying look - "Look...that poor sod bought a motorola, how sad..."
A lot of stuff runs linux nowadays. But just because you can slap linux on a machine doesn't mean it's a good machine...
Don't wanna come off as a troll, but I used it and I looked at the code it produces, and basically, it's just not good.
Granted, it probably is easier to handle than your average c/c++ compiler, and it probably has an easy to use GUI, and that all might work perfectly for programmers in windows, but are WE really the sort of people who use stuff like that?
We have all these great, completely free tools, like gcc, gmake, yacc, bison, vi, emacs, kdevelop etc pp. Why would anyone want to use Kylix? I think it was a stillborn project, porting Delphi to linux. We're just not that sort of people...
The Federal Communications Commission will likely adopt rules that will allow programmers to attach a code to digital broadcasts that will in most cases bar consumers from sending copies of popular shows around the world, said the officials, who declined further identification.
Errrr... so? Who cares? Surely, someone will come up with some nice technomalogical gizmo that will break this nonsense. I'm not worried. It's stupid and finally futile.
Slashdot Mirror
I've made two little patches, one for the kernel and one for a user space application. Both were't really that significant at all, but I got feedback for both of them with suggestions...
<irony>
Ah look, it's our friend from the nvnews forum. Didn't you write there a few months ago that you thought open source drivers can't be anything but sh*tty? Glad to see you around here, matey.
</irony>
I think someone already pointed out 5 months ago that the drivers no longer contain that code. Of course I have no idea if that's true. What I can say is that many people asked either for the source to be released or for specifications of the hardware so that open source drivers could be made. That wouldn't concern stuff like your S3TC texture compression I'd say.
You've been debunking all those requests with your it-all-works-on-my-pc attitude, blissfully unaware of the possibility that other users might have other experiences. In fact, one gets the impression from your posts that you're an opponent of Open Source and that you think that anything free (as in speech) has to suck. I wonder, why are you not using Windows then? NVidia's drivers work beautifully there (for the most part) and you don't have to hear those Open-Source-The-Drivers requests anymore.
And get that into your head: You're not the measure of everything, and other people might have different requirements than you. Now kindly go troll someplace else.
As I see it, you link your GPLed work to some proprietary work. There's hardly any base for calling this a violation of the GPL. If normal binary-only drivers are in a grayzone, than your zone must be #FEFEFE. I wouldn't worry about legal implications here too much.
Besides, I think this discussion is mostly aimed at manufacturers - which indeed have a choice wether or not to include everything as source code. On the other side, anyone who disses you for doing what you do is clearly a moron. I'm sure the great majority of users appreciates your ongoing effords - most likely even the evangelists. Otherwise your driver wouldn't have made it into the kernel :)
Of course you can argue that this is a two-way relation, and that users probably would no longer buy those products if there's no support for linux. And since the linux userbase is growing constantly, that might prove to be a bigger problem for the manufacturer.
Also, the makers of would probobly state that using the code means you get no tech support, no warranty, no nothing.
Ever loaded a "tainted" kernel module? It says there you can't get support from the kernel people if anything goes wrong while it's loaded.
In a way I guess, it boils down to a choice between plague and cholera :|
Reading all the comments here I simply can't understand why so many people are so hardheaded. Don't you see / understand that to make Linux an OS with great support for a LOT of hardware, you have to convince hardware vendors their drivers will not be part of a GPL-case? Apparently not.
Consider this: If I wanted to use a system where everything's closed source, what do I need linux for? I could just as well use Windows. And as many previous posters have pointed out, if you explicitely allow binary-only drivers, you discourage manufacturers from making their drivers available as source code. It's how the market works. Manufacturers never make unnecessary concessions.
It's my understanding that since the information traditionally included in .h files (excepting perhaps inline'd code) is not considered copyrightable, since all it does is define data types and methods, it does not implemeent them.
Not 100% correct, I'm afraid. Many include files contain macros, which are indeed code. Thus, if you include such an include file and use one of the macros, you have a derived work, at least to a certain extend.
Yes it is, but then your program falls under the scope of the GPL. You can still sell it though...
The firmware is more a part of the device than of the driver for the device. It's practically the device's OS, in a way. It is generally not linux-based, except in a few cases and thus does not fall inside the scope of this discussion. Yes, the firmware might be uploaded by the driver, but you could just as well consider it pure data the driver handles.
Concerning your statement about being stuck with WLANs with 'static' firmware - I can't quite follow that. I've just recently worked with WLAN cards that had their firmware uploaded on every bootup...
Perhaps you should read his comments again.
He clearly states that user space applications are not subject to this.
Mild amusement. That's why.
I have the unprovable itch that some of these same people who are bashing his as-yet unanounced plans for moonbase 1 would have rooted and cheered if certain other presidents had made this same decision.
When being confronted with a statement made by a politician, it is always helpful to ask several questions:
Who said it? Someone who is in trouble. Someone who is afraid his reelection won't go as smoothly as he'd like. Someone who's actions so far led to two wars, at least one for which the reasons supplied were - if I may say so - at least a little bit shady. Not to mention a couple of interior problems in the US.
What was his statement? Something that can at best be called very populistic. A proposition that wakes feelings of grandeur and national pride in many people, but is far from being of any real use, military, economically or scientifically and will cost an amount of money that would suffice to put an end to world hunger.
Why and when did he make that proposition? Left as an excercise to the reader.
Would I approve of this if Clinton said it? Well. It surely makes a difference in as sofar as the economical and social situation was different (read: better). It's still call it a waste of money though, and that even though I am fond of space travel. But as long as our "domestic" problems aren't solved, we should not waste resources on effords like this. Just my $.02
Man this is so obviously an attempt to get geek/scifi fan votes I can't believe it.
Also u forgot to mention his real name, Olorin. And that he is the wisest of the Maia. And that he used to live in the woods of Lorien in Valinor, the dwellings of the Vala Irmo.
Did I pass the test? Can I go west now? :o
Also read this translation of a heise.de article about the new standard and it's competitor.
The StrongARM and MIPS architectures never had such a strong appeal as now :>
Seriously, if this becomes reality and in the very unlikely event that nothing can be done about it, I'd probably move to a different architecture, perhaps even Macintrash :) Might even give OS X a try. My only point of critizism about Apple products is, they're overprized. Ah well.
They'd just microwave the bills.
Move on, theres nothing to see here.
Cheers mate :)
Am I the only one who stopped reading the article after about 2 seconds because of that megaannoying Absolute Vodka add with music?
If that's the new trend someone has to modify mozilla to allow for blocking not only of images but also of flash files :<
Five years in prison for recording The Hulk in a theater?
How about five years for actually watching that drivel?
You must be kidding. I bought one of their timeport phones and it was the total suckage. I asked a couple friends why that was, and they gave me that pittying look - "Look...that poor sod bought a motorola, how sad..."
A lot of stuff runs linux nowadays. But just because you can slap linux on a machine doesn't mean it's a good machine...
Well, two words:
Delphi sucks.
Don't wanna come off as a troll, but I used it and I looked at the code it produces, and basically, it's just not good.
Granted, it probably is easier to handle than your average c/c++ compiler, and it probably has an easy to use GUI, and that all might work perfectly for programmers in windows, but are WE really the sort of people who use stuff like that?
We have all these great, completely free tools, like gcc, gmake, yacc, bison, vi, emacs, kdevelop etc pp. Why would anyone want to use Kylix? I think it was a stillborn project, porting Delphi to linux. We're just not that sort of people...
Warm air intake, harvest the energy, cool air exaust.
Very good idea. You can be sure hot air is a resource you'll never run low on - with all those politicians around...
The Federal Communications Commission will likely adopt rules that will allow programmers to attach a code to digital broadcasts that will in most cases bar consumers from sending copies of popular shows around the world, said the officials, who declined further identification.
Errrr... so? Who cares? Surely, someone will come up with some nice technomalogical gizmo that will break this nonsense. I'm not worried. It's stupid and finally futile.
At least home users of Linux can take solace in knowing that they don't have to pay up yet.
Phew, what a relief. That was really keeping me awake at night.