Quoting Stamatis Mitrofanis <ewstam@softhome.net>:

> It had occurred to me that it might be a good idea to make things such 
> that unsatisfied hotplug requests are forwarded through the network to 
> certain database servers.

> This automatic-downloading system must be very small, very uniform and 
> very simple to implement. Questions that need answers:

> - What protocol do we use for communication of the user system with the 
> server system? (must be well-known and standard)

http:// and nothing else. This is because of firewalls and proxies
that are capable of handling it. Other protocols/ports are often
blocked from leaving intranets. Also, all http:// infrastructure is
already available and widely deployed, allowing easy mirroring.

> - How do we organize scripts and programs to do the job?

wget http://www.kernel.org/cgi-bin/getdriver?bus=usb&pid=0x1234&vid=0x5678
tar xzvf usb_0x1234_0x5678.tar.gz
cd usb_0x1234_0x5678 && make && make install

> - What will be the formats for drivers downloaded from the net?

likely, tarballs - but .rpm or .deb is also OK, as long as the originator
of the request asked for them, *and* as long as they are available. This
means that the script has to know how to fall back to the tarball.

> - <insert your question here>

Add mandatory signatures to all packages, and mandatory checking of
said signatures vs. hardcoded list of identities (public keys).
This means that only holders of these keys can publish drivers.
Otherwise this will be insecure, to put it mildly :-)

Thanks,
Dmitri

-- 
"We all know Linux is great...it does infinite loops in 5 seconds."
  (Linus Torvalds about the superiority of Linux on the Amterdam
   Linux Symposium)