Re: DRM drivers with closed source user-space: WAS [Patch 0/3] Resubmit VIA Chrome9 DRM via_chrome9 for upstream

["Thomas Hellström" <thomas@shipmail.org>]

Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-07-20 at 15:38 +0200, Thomas Hellström wrote:
>   
>> Politics:
>> It's true that sometimes some people don't like the code or what it 
>> does. But when this is the underlying cause of NAK-ing a driver I think 
>> it's very important that this is clearly stated, instead of inventing 
>> various random reasons that can easily be argued against. How should the 
>> driver writer otherwise get it right? Man-years might be spent fixing up 
>> drivers that will never get upstream anyway.
>>
>> I think it would help a lot of there was a documented set of driver 
>> features that were required and sufficient for a DRM driver to go 
>> upstream. It could look something like
>>
>>     * Kernel coding style obeyed. Passing checkpatch.
>>     
>
>       * fully functional GPL user-space driver.
>
> How can you argue that something as tailor made as a DRM interface can
> be used without it being a derived work?
>
> FWIW my full vote goes against allowing such thing to happen, and I
> think quite a lot of kernel people would agree with me.
>
> I would hope enough of of them would so that we can stop this from
> happening.
>
> Negative karma points to you for trying to chip away at the spirit of
>   

As stated before this was a suggestion to clarify the field for driver 
writers.

If the documented set of driver features required is fully open-source 
so be it. Just let people know.

/Thomas


> Linux.
>