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

Matthieu CASTET
2005-12-05T23:26:38Z

Le Mon, 05 Dec 2005 11:52:32 +0100, Arjan van de Ven a écrit :

> Linux in a binary world
>
>
> What if.. what if the linux kernel developers tomorrow accept that
> binary modules are OK and are essential for the progress of linux.
>
[...]
> Now this scenario may sound unlikely to you. And thankfully the main
> assumption (the December 6th event) is extremely unlikely.
>
> However, and this unfortunately, several of the other "leaps" aren't
> that unlikely. In fact, some of these results are likely to happen
> regardless; witness the flamewars on lkml about breaking module API/ABI.
> Witness the ndiswrapper effect of vendors now saying "we support linux
> because ndiswrapper can use our windows driver". I hope they won't
> happen. Some of that hope will be idle hope, but I believe that the
> advantages of freedom in the end are strong enough to overcome the
> counter forces.
And some embedded companies provide the minimal source code to put
in arch and everything else (ethernet, adsl, wifi, ...) is binaries
modules.