Re: [PATCH] Blacklist binary-only modules lying about their license

Jesse Pollard
2004-04-30T20:03:59Z

On Friday 30 April 2004 11:10, Timothy Miller wrote:
> Peter Williams wrote:
> >> "DriverLoader technology is the ideal Linux solution to support
> >> devices for
> >> which no adequate native open-source drivers are available. It also
> >> allows
> >> vendors to drastically reduce time to market or eliminate the need to
> >> support
> >> multiple drivers for Windows and Linux. By using the same driver on
> >> both platforms, significant resources can be saved."
> >>
> >> Rusty was right.
> >
> > Why did you omit the next paragraph (which completes the story):
> >
> > "We have attempted to reduce the inconvenience of binary-only drivers by
> > separating the proprietary code from the operating-system specific code.
> > The latter is provided in source form, allowing users to install the
> > drivers under any supported version (2.4 or later) of the Linux kernel."
>
> While it does allow for Linux to get certain kinds of drivers quicker,
> it turns hardware developers into slackers who don't want to REALLY
> support Linux and eats away at the spirit of Linux as an open system.
>
> What you're doing may short-term enhance hardware support for Linux, but
> in the long term, it is a set-back for Linux because it does not
> encourage hardware vendors to support Linux directly and even pushes
> true Linux support further into the future.

And worse -

It hangs the users out to dry if the vendor drops support of the
driver/hardware.

With full source code the community or the user would be able to continue
to update/fix the driver for new kernels.