That is monolithic as well, but not using the term in the same way. Monolithic essentially means made from a single piece. This CAN refer to modules as well, as the kernel modules aren't built into the kernel binary, but in the case of monolithic vs. microkernel, it doesn't refer to how the kernel is built. Rather it refers to the execution of the operating system kernel.
A modular Linux kernel loads as a single executable that then loads modules into it's process space as needed to do things. This is essentially a monolithic kernel. The OS runs as a single process.
Microkernel's have the OS split as seperate processes, mostly outside the core microkernel (which has the job of facilitating message passing between all these processes, and lowlevel process management). The Microkernel may or may not do I/O, sometimes seperate processes do.
Hope that helps.
I've always thought of LSB as more or less a joke. It provides people with a roadmap of where to expect most of the usual commands. The vast majority of Linux distros are based on GNU tools (i.e. the whole GNU-Linux debate). GNU tools are generally built into the same directories. Almost all Linux distros can rely on a good basic/usr/usr/bin/bin/sbin/usr/sbin/etc structure. They almost all share the same tools that are spelled out by LSB, and considering they almost all use the same libraries (glibc, etc) they pretty much share the same library interfaces and so on.
There's nothing LSB offers that isn't already there by nature of the tools that most linux distros use. Linux distros pretty much migrate toward a standard just due to the very nature of it's Unix/GNU inheritance. Why spend the money to certify?
Now, especially add to the fact that the majority of software vendors don't sell you products for LSB-certified Linux distributions. Instead, they certify specific versions of RedHat or Suse or whatever, and in some very annoying cases, they spell out specific glibc and kernel versions. I.e. go beyond those, and their technical support will tell you to go away.
Software vendors don't care about "standards compliance" in the sense that they want their product to work. They don't want to deal with any unknowns. Any unknowns puts their QA reputation at risk. Just because someone is compliant to a standard doesn't mean it works the exact same way. If Vendor A were to create Product X, and wanted to support Linux Distro Y and Linux Distro Z and both distros happen to be LSB complaint, they aren't going to gain anything from it, since they're still going to have to test against both platforms to ensure that they work. If they don't, and for some reason something not specified in the LSB standard (or hell, even an implementation of something specified) causes a compatibility problem, and customer C happens to be a multi-billion dollar company with lawyer-happy executives buys the product and finds the problem, the shit can really hit the fan.
I work for a relatively large software company, and I've seen lesser things trigger lawsuit threats.
This is why the LSB is useless. You have to pay to get it. For you to justify paying, there has to be a financial interest. Financial interest generally means, they want to run some vendor's commercial app. That vendor is going to re-certify the platform no matter if it's LSB certified or not. And unfortunately, vendor's are going to look for the biggest bang for their buck (i.e. redhat or suse), so if Joe Blow Linux distribution goes LSB, the vendor still isn't going to support that platform.
Voting third party is really the same as throwing away your vote with the current electoral system. The addition of a third party could potentially result in a non-majority electoral winner. This would result in the house of representatives electing the president. Which means, with the current process, the big 2 parties would likely stay in power. Even if all the states switch to a process where their electoral votes are split amongst the candidates, it would potentially result in the same process above (a non-majority winner).
Without a constitutional ammendment fixing our election process (run-off voting or something else) voting third party is, for all intents and purposes, useless. The problem is, the big 2 are currently in power. They have absolutely no reason to want to "fix" the system, since both shortterm and longterm effects will be negative on the two big parties. Even if we managed to get some third party candidates into the legislature to help change the system, just by the sheer number of absolutely ignorant uneducated voters we have, we'll still have the big 2 with control of the vast majority of congress. (2004 is a good example. more poor, uneducated masses voted for bush, being brought out to vote on moral values issues, which the federal government really should have no responsibility over, instead of voting for kerry, who's party has had a stronger tradition of protecting the poor and uneducated, although admittedly, they're only marginally better than the modern republicans) Good luck getting a constitutional ammendment passed to make voting for a third party even remotely viable in the US.
Me, I'm trying to find a good nation to move to. Unfortunately, they all seem to be just as bad as the US in one form or another.
I have a Dell Inspiron 8500. I bought a prism54 based 802.11g card. This card has native linux support and is one of the few 802.11g devices that has drivers included in the kernel sources now.
Works great. Sometime recently, I decided to get a bluetooth phone, and decided it'd be time to upgrade the laptop with the internal bluetooth module. Ordered it from Dell, and installed it, the bluetooth module (Dell TrueMobile 300) no workie.
If I remove the mini-pci card, it works fine. But otherwise, the bluetooth just won't work. The only thing I can imagine that would cause this is that the mini-pci card is "Unknown" according to the BIOS and both the mini-pci wireless and bluetooth cards are supposed to be controlled by the Fn-F2 key combination. Without being able to "known" what the mini-PCI card is, it just disables the bluetooth.
I decided to order a $29 intel B/G card. I'm not happy that I have to do it, but at the same time, I don't mind buying an Intel card since they have native linux drivers as well.
IE was based on Mosaic. Which was never opensourced. Sure, source code was available, but that's a far cry from being GPL'ed, or even considered open source.
The problem with these types of interviews is they are really unable to truly address any real points and every interview of this type I've read has Microsoft coming out on top with either very rational sounding FUD, or just plain one-sided logic.
Microsoft is an amazing marketting machine. They're quite similar to the Bush administration in that they're surprisingly good at defending their point of view, and refusing to truly address the opposing questions. They don't "negotiate with themselves" (as Bush put it).
This guy will have an absolutely perfect marketting response to any question posed, and the fact that the questions are presented ahead of time doesn't allow for follow up questions to deal with specific points.
Just look at the Bill Gates interview that was posted recently. He answered ever question fairly rationally, and without someone truly knowledgeable pressing the point, his arguments come out sounding really good, especially for people who are straddling the fence.
Anyways, here was the final e-mail. With whitespace and corrections:
To whom it may concern, I thought it was time to voice my opinion regarding Steam. I have been a HUGE Half-Life fan. I've purchased multiple copies of Half-Life so that we can play multiplayer games together at home (I didn't even have to do that since they were all LAN games and the CD keys don't appear to be enforced by LAN games, but still, I've paid money for multiple copies of HL because it's a good game and buying software is a nice way to support the companies who put out decent software). I still play Half-Life, cs, tf, and dod on a regular basis.
However, with regards to Half-Life 2, I cannot justify giving you any money for the game (no matter how good it is), and I have voiced this opinion heavily to my friends and co-workers. Many of them are unaware of the reasons why they would not want to purchase Half-Life 2 until they heard from me and now they agree completely and refuse to buy Half-Life 2.
The main issue that has prompted my unwillingness to purchase Half-Life 2 is Steam. The DRM measures used in Steam are draconian. If I purchase a single player game, I see absolutely no need to access an online system just to play the game. Apparently, on 1/29/2005 many users suffered from the exact problem that I had envisioned when I first heard about this. If something goes wrong, you can't play. Yes, I know about offline mode. However, offline mode doesn't really work well I only boot to Windows to play games. Each start of the steam client apparently "phones home". This is absolutely unacceptable to do for a single player game. The fact that something goes wrong on your end could prevent me from playing a single player game I purchased is completely absurd. I understand the need to protect yourself from piracy, but based on the information I've been reading, pirates have already figured out how to circumvent Steam. At this point, you're hurting your paying customers more than pirates. Apparently, paying customers (once you have their money) rank lower than pirates.
The second point I have with Steam is a minor one, cheat banning. I understand why you do cheat banning. My problem with cheat banning is your methods of dealing with it: 1) If the cheats are removed and one BUYS a new cd-key then they can play on the secure servers. The keyword here is an individual has to BUY a new key after removing all the cheats. This is analogous to our legal system sentencing someone, then saying, if you bribe me, your sentence is commuted. This is absurd and doesn't reflect well in my eyes, as well as a significant chunk of the gaming community. I absolutely understand the need for cheat protection, but when the solution to it, after being caught, is to give you more money, well, you can see how that looks. 2) Directly from your FAQ: "Valve's Anti-Cheat system (VAC) automatically detects programs and other methods used to cheat in Valve's games and does not have any false positives in the system. We will not un-ban you regardless of the reason. It doesn't matter if someone else used your account, you didn't know what you were doing was wrong, your brother or sister downloaded a cheat you didn't know about, etc." How can you guarantee that there are no false positives? Any detection system is guaranteed to be exploitable. It just needs time to figure it out. What if someone figures out the exploit and were to release a W32.Steam.Cheat virus? How would you handle this? Based on your FAQ, VAC can do no wrong and you won't un-ban anyone. Will this statement stand? This second point regarding cheat banning is completely speculative not knowing what your VAC system actually does. However, the tone of the "We will not un-ban you regardless of the reason" once again solidifies in my mind that you care more about preventing piracy (which so far, it seems steam has failed at) than you seem to care about your paying customers.
Due to my concerns above, I will not be spending any money on Half-Life 2. I received HL2 as
I did the typo check after posting to slashdot. It was sent more or less typo free. It also had whitespace. I was too damn lazy to edit for HTML just for slashdot and I refuse to do HTML e-mail, so cutting and pasting HTML wasn't an option.
While I'm positive people have voiced their opinions to Valve, I thought it was time I did so as well. I've been boycotting HL2 and Steam for a while now, and who knows, maybe my e-mail is the one that'll send them over to the light side:)
Anyways, here it is if anyone cares:
To whom it may concern,
I thought it was time to voice my opinion regarding Steam. I have been a HUGE Half-Life fan. I've purchased multiple copies of half-life so that we can play multiplayers together at home (I didn't even have to do that since they were all LAN games and the CD keys don't appear to be enforced by LAN games, but still, I've paid money for multiple copies of HL because it's a good game and I buying software is a nice way to support the companies who put out decent software). I still play half-life, cs, tf, and dod on a regular basis.
However, with regards to Half-life 2, I cannot justify giving you any money for the game (no matter how good it is), and I have voiced this opinion heavily to my friends and co-workers. Many of them are unaware of the reasons why they would not want to purchase half-life 2 until they heard from me and now they agree completely and refuse to buy Half-life 2.
The main issue that has prompted my unwillingness to purchase half-life 2 is Steam. The DRM measures used in Steam are draconian. If I purchase single player game, I see absolutely no need to access an online system just to play the game. Apparently, on 1/29/2005 many users suffered from the exact problem that I had envisioned when I first heard about this. If something goes wrong, you can't play. Yes, I know about offline mode. However, offline mode doesn't really work well I only boot to Windows to play games. Each start of the steam client apparently "phones home". This is absolutely unacceptable to do for a single player game. The fact that if something goes wrong on your end could prevent me from playing a single player game I purchased is completely absurd.
I understand the need to protect yourself from piracy, but based on the information I've been reading, pirates have already figured out how to circumvent Steam. At this point, you're hurting your paying customers more than pirates. Apparently, paying customers (once you have their money) rank lower than pirates.
The second point I have with Steam is a minor one. Cheat banning. I understand why you do cheat banning. My problem with cheat banning is your methods of dealing with it:
1) If the cheats are removed and one BUYS a new cd-key then they can play on the secure servers. Keyword here is an individual has to BUY a new key after removing all the cheats. This is analogous to our legal system sentencing someone, then saying, if you bribe me, your sentence is commuted. This is absurd and doesn't reflect well in my eyes, as well as a significant chunk of the gaming community. I absolutely understand the need for cheat protection, but when the solution to it, after being caught, is to give you more money, well, you can see how that looks.
2) Directly from your FAQ:
"Valve's Anti-Cheat system (VAC) automatically detects programs and other methods used to cheat in Valve's games and does not have any false positives in the system.
We will not un-ban you regardless of the reason. It doesn't matter if someone else used your account, you didn't know what you were doing was wrong, your brother or sister downloaded a cheat you didn't know about, etc."
How can you guarantee that there are no false positives? Any detection system is guaranteed to be exploitable. It just needs time to figure it out. What if someone figures out the exploit and were to release a W32.Steam.Cheat virus, how would you handle this? Based on your FAQ, VAC can do no wrong and you won't un-ban anyone. Will this statement stand?
This second point regarding cheat banning is completely speculative not knowing what your VAC system actually does. However, the tone of the "We will not un-ban you regardless of the reason" once again solidifies in my mind that you care more about
I think it's a little of both. The firmware portion still hides alot of what the hardware does, but, since the driver is entirely opensource, at least you know what the kernel portion is doing. It's one step closer to opensource than NVidia, but I don't think it's 100% there (still, it's great). I've been using the prism54 drivers with the miniPCI 54G card I bought and they do the same thing, opensource driver, closed firmware.
That's like saying ACPI for linux isn't an intel contribution because it's a sourceforge project. Take a look at the README for the driver. The primary contact for this is James P. Ketrenos who appears to be an Intel employee.
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That is monolithic as well, but not using the term in the same way. Monolithic essentially means made from a single piece. This CAN refer to modules as well, as the kernel modules aren't built into the kernel binary, but in the case of monolithic vs. microkernel, it doesn't refer to how the kernel is built. Rather it refers to the execution of the operating system kernel. A modular Linux kernel loads as a single executable that then loads modules into it's process space as needed to do things. This is essentially a monolithic kernel. The OS runs as a single process. Microkernel's have the OS split as seperate processes, mostly outside the core microkernel (which has the job of facilitating message passing between all these processes, and lowlevel process management). The Microkernel may or may not do I/O, sometimes seperate processes do. Hope that helps.
I've always thought of LSB as more or less a joke. It provides people with a roadmap of where to expect most of the usual commands. The vast majority of Linux distros are based on GNU tools (i.e. the whole GNU-Linux debate). GNU tools are generally built into the same directories. Almost all Linux distros can rely on a good basic /usr /usr/bin /bin /sbin /usr/sbin /etc structure. They almost all share the same tools that are spelled out by LSB, and considering they almost all use the same libraries (glibc, etc) they pretty much share the same library interfaces and so on.
There's nothing LSB offers that isn't already there by nature of the tools that most linux distros use. Linux distros pretty much migrate toward a standard just due to the very nature of it's Unix/GNU inheritance. Why spend the money to certify?
Now, especially add to the fact that the majority of software vendors don't sell you products for LSB-certified Linux distributions. Instead, they certify specific versions of RedHat or Suse or whatever, and in some very annoying cases, they spell out specific glibc and kernel versions. I.e. go beyond those, and their technical support will tell you to go away.
Software vendors don't care about "standards compliance" in the sense that they want their product to work. They don't want to deal with any unknowns. Any unknowns puts their QA reputation at risk. Just because someone is compliant to a standard doesn't mean it works the exact same way. If Vendor A were to create Product X, and wanted to support Linux Distro Y and Linux Distro Z and both distros happen to be LSB complaint, they aren't going to gain anything from it, since they're still going to have to test against both platforms to ensure that they work. If they don't, and for some reason something not specified in the LSB standard (or hell, even an implementation of something specified) causes a compatibility problem, and customer C happens to be a multi-billion dollar company with lawyer-happy executives buys the product and finds the problem, the shit can really hit the fan.
I work for a relatively large software company, and I've seen lesser things trigger lawsuit threats.
This is why the LSB is useless. You have to pay to get it. For you to justify paying, there has to be a financial interest. Financial interest generally means, they want to run some vendor's commercial app. That vendor is going to re-certify the platform no matter if it's LSB certified or not. And unfortunately, vendor's are going to look for the biggest bang for their buck (i.e. redhat or suse), so if Joe Blow Linux distribution goes LSB, the vendor still isn't going to support that platform.
Voting third party is really the same as throwing away your vote with the current electoral system. The addition of a third party could potentially result in a non-majority electoral winner. This would result in the house of representatives electing the president. Which means, with the current process, the big 2 parties would likely stay in power. Even if all the states switch to a process where their electoral votes are split amongst the candidates, it would potentially result in the same process above (a non-majority winner).
Without a constitutional ammendment fixing our election process (run-off voting or something else) voting third party is, for all intents and purposes, useless. The problem is, the big 2 are currently in power. They have absolutely no reason to want to "fix" the system, since both shortterm and longterm effects will be negative on the two big parties. Even if we managed to get some third party candidates into the legislature to help change the system, just by the sheer number of absolutely ignorant uneducated voters we have, we'll still have the big 2 with control of the vast majority of congress. (2004 is a good example. more poor, uneducated masses voted for bush, being brought out to vote on moral values issues, which the federal government really should have no responsibility over, instead of voting for kerry, who's party has had a stronger tradition of protecting the poor and uneducated, although admittedly, they're only marginally better than the modern republicans) Good luck getting a constitutional ammendment passed to make voting for a third party even remotely viable in the US.
Me, I'm trying to find a good nation to move to. Unfortunately, they all seem to be just as bad as the US in one form or another.
I have a Dell Inspiron 8500. I bought a prism54 based 802.11g card. This card has native linux support and is one of the few 802.11g devices that has drivers included in the kernel sources now. Works great. Sometime recently, I decided to get a bluetooth phone, and decided it'd be time to upgrade the laptop with the internal bluetooth module. Ordered it from Dell, and installed it, the bluetooth module (Dell TrueMobile 300) no workie. If I remove the mini-pci card, it works fine. But otherwise, the bluetooth just won't work. The only thing I can imagine that would cause this is that the mini-pci card is "Unknown" according to the BIOS and both the mini-pci wireless and bluetooth cards are supposed to be controlled by the Fn-F2 key combination. Without being able to "known" what the mini-PCI card is, it just disables the bluetooth. I decided to order a $29 intel B/G card. I'm not happy that I have to do it, but at the same time, I don't mind buying an Intel card since they have native linux drivers as well.
IE was based on Mosaic. Which was never opensourced. Sure, source code was available, but that's a far cry from being GPL'ed, or even considered open source.
The problem with these types of interviews is they are really unable to truly address any real points and every interview of this type I've read has Microsoft coming out on top with either very rational sounding FUD, or just plain one-sided logic.
Microsoft is an amazing marketting machine. They're quite similar to the Bush administration in that they're surprisingly good at defending their point of view, and refusing to truly address the opposing questions. They don't "negotiate with themselves" (as Bush put it).
This guy will have an absolutely perfect marketting response to any question posed, and the fact that the questions are presented ahead of time doesn't allow for follow up questions to deal with specific points.
Just look at the Bill Gates interview that was posted recently. He answered ever question fairly rationally, and without someone truly knowledgeable pressing the point, his arguments come out sounding really good, especially for people who are straddling the fence.
Anyways, here was the final e-mail.
With whitespace and corrections:
To whom it may concern,
I thought it was time to voice my opinion regarding Steam. I have been a HUGE Half-Life fan. I've purchased multiple copies of Half-Life so that we can play multiplayer games together at home (I didn't even have to do that since they were all LAN games and the CD keys don't appear to be enforced by LAN games, but still, I've paid money for multiple copies of HL because it's a good game and buying software is a nice way to support the companies who put out decent software). I still play Half-Life, cs, tf, and dod on a regular basis.
However, with regards to Half-Life 2, I cannot justify giving you any money for the game (no matter how good it is), and I have voiced this opinion heavily to my friends and co-workers. Many of them are unaware of the reasons why they would not want to purchase Half-Life 2 until they heard from me and now they agree completely and refuse to buy Half-Life 2.
The main issue that has prompted my unwillingness to purchase Half-Life 2 is Steam. The DRM measures used in Steam are draconian. If I purchase a single player game, I see absolutely no need to access an online system just to play the game. Apparently, on 1/29/2005 many users suffered from the exact problem that I had envisioned when I first heard about this. If something goes wrong, you can't play. Yes, I know about offline mode. However, offline mode doesn't really work well I only boot to Windows to play games. Each start of the steam client apparently "phones home". This is absolutely unacceptable to do for a single player game. The fact that something goes wrong on your end could prevent me from playing a single player game I purchased is completely absurd. I understand the need to protect yourself from piracy, but based on the information I've been reading, pirates have already figured out how to circumvent Steam. At this point, you're hurting your paying customers more than pirates. Apparently, paying customers (once you have their money) rank lower than pirates.
The second point I have with Steam is a minor one, cheat banning. I understand why you do cheat banning. My problem with cheat banning is your methods of dealing with it:
1) If the cheats are removed and one BUYS a new cd-key then they can play on the secure servers. The keyword here is an individual has to BUY a new key after removing all the cheats. This is analogous to our legal system sentencing someone, then saying, if you bribe me, your sentence is commuted. This is absurd and doesn't reflect well in my eyes, as well as a significant chunk of the gaming community. I absolutely understand the need for cheat protection, but when the solution to it, after being caught, is to give you more money, well, you can see how that looks.
2) Directly from your FAQ: "Valve's Anti-Cheat system (VAC) automatically detects programs and other methods used to cheat in Valve's games and does not have any false positives in the system. We will not un-ban you regardless of the reason. It doesn't matter if someone else used your account, you didn't know what you were doing was wrong, your brother or sister downloaded a cheat you didn't know about, etc." How can you guarantee that there are no false positives? Any detection system is guaranteed to be exploitable. It just needs time to figure it out. What if someone figures out the exploit and were to release a W32.Steam.Cheat virus? How would you handle this? Based on your FAQ, VAC can do no wrong and you won't un-ban anyone. Will this statement stand? This second point regarding cheat banning is completely speculative not knowing what your VAC system actually does. However, the tone of the "We will not un-ban you regardless of the reason" once again solidifies in my mind that you care more about preventing piracy (which so far, it seems steam has failed at) than you seem to care about your paying customers.
Due to my concerns above, I will not be spending any money on Half-Life 2. I received HL2 as
I did the typo check after posting to slashdot. It was sent more or less typo free. It also had whitespace. I was too damn lazy to edit for HTML just for slashdot and I refuse to do HTML e-mail, so cutting and pasting HTML wasn't an option.
While I'm positive people have voiced their opinions to Valve, I thought it was time I did so as well. I've been boycotting HL2 and Steam for a while now, and who knows, maybe my e-mail is the one that'll send them over to the light side :)
Anyways, here it is if anyone cares:
To whom it may concern,
I thought it was time to voice my opinion regarding Steam. I have been a HUGE Half-Life fan. I've purchased multiple copies of half-life so that we can play multiplayers together at home (I didn't even have to do that since they were all LAN games and the CD keys don't appear to be enforced by LAN games, but still, I've paid money for multiple copies of HL because it's a good game and I buying software is a nice way to support the companies who put out decent software). I still play half-life, cs, tf, and dod on a regular basis.
However, with regards to Half-life 2, I cannot justify giving you any money for the game (no matter how good it is), and I have voiced this opinion heavily to my friends and co-workers. Many of them are unaware of the reasons why they would not want to purchase half-life 2 until they heard from me and now they agree completely and refuse to buy Half-life 2.
The main issue that has prompted my unwillingness to purchase half-life 2 is Steam. The DRM measures used in Steam are draconian. If I purchase single player game, I see absolutely no need to access an online system just to play the game. Apparently, on 1/29/2005 many users suffered from the exact problem that I had envisioned when I first heard about this. If something goes wrong, you can't play. Yes, I know about offline mode. However, offline mode doesn't really work well I only boot to Windows to play games. Each start of the steam client apparently "phones home". This is absolutely unacceptable to do for a single player game. The fact that if something goes wrong on your end could prevent me from playing a single player game I purchased is completely absurd.
I understand the need to protect yourself from piracy, but based on the information I've been reading, pirates have already figured out how to circumvent Steam. At this point, you're hurting your paying customers more than pirates. Apparently, paying customers (once you have their money) rank lower than pirates.
The second point I have with Steam is a minor one. Cheat banning. I understand why you do cheat banning. My problem with cheat banning is your methods of dealing with it:
1) If the cheats are removed and one BUYS a new cd-key then they can play on the secure servers. Keyword here is an individual has to BUY a new key after removing all the cheats. This is analogous to our legal system sentencing someone, then saying, if you bribe me, your sentence is commuted. This is absurd and doesn't reflect well in my eyes, as well as a significant chunk of the gaming community. I absolutely understand the need for cheat protection, but when the solution to it, after being caught, is to give you more money, well, you can see how that looks.
2) Directly from your FAQ:
"Valve's Anti-Cheat system (VAC) automatically detects programs and other methods used to cheat in Valve's games and does not have any false positives in the system.
We will not un-ban you regardless of the reason. It doesn't matter if someone else used your account, you didn't know what you were doing was wrong, your brother or sister downloaded a cheat you didn't know about, etc."
How can you guarantee that there are no false positives? Any detection system is guaranteed to be exploitable. It just needs time to figure it out. What if someone figures out the exploit and were to release a W32.Steam.Cheat virus, how would you handle this? Based on your FAQ, VAC can do no wrong and you won't un-ban anyone. Will this statement stand?
This second point regarding cheat banning is completely speculative not knowing what your VAC system actually does. However, the tone of the "We will not un-ban you regardless of the reason" once again solidifies in my mind that you care more about
I think it's a little of both. The firmware portion still hides alot of what the hardware does, but, since the driver is entirely opensource, at least you know what the kernel portion is doing. It's one step closer to opensource than NVidia, but I don't think it's 100% there (still, it's great). I've been using the prism54 drivers with the miniPCI 54G card I bought and they do the same thing, opensource driver, closed firmware.
That's like saying ACPI for linux isn't an intel contribution because it's a sourceforge project. Take a look at the README for the driver. The primary contact for this is James P. Ketrenos who appears to be an Intel employee.