Re: Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario

David Woodhouse
2005-12-06T08:13:28Z

On Tue, 2005-12-06 at 07:07 +0100, Willy Tarreau wrote:
> Most of those small companies who propose a Linux driver simply start
> by paying a student during summer for porting their
> windows/sco/whatever driver to linux. They think the job is done when
> he leaves. Unfortunately, they receive complaints 3 months later from
> users because the driver is broken and does not build. They don't have
> the resources to keep a permanent developer on it, and they quickly
> understand that Linux is just a "geek OS" and that it's the last time
> they release any driver.

If they hired someone who did a _proper_ job -- writing a fully portable
and maintainable driver which got merged into Linus' kernel, then this
scenario doesn't make much sense. In-kernel code does generally get
maintained as interfaces change.

Of course, maintaining a driver _outside_ the kernel tree is a
never-ending task -- but why would anybody ever want to do that?

--
dwmw2