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

[Jan-Benedict Glaw <jbglaw@lug-owl.de>]

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On Fri, 2004-04-30 01:44:24 -0400, Marc Boucher <marc@linuxant.com>
wrote in message <6FD0ADAF-9A69-11D8-B83D-000A95BCAC26@linuxant.com>:

> There are major chipset vendors out there who have managed to become 
> market leaders while not providing any drivers for Linux.

Which I think is a bad thing. Vendors work for their customers (hey,
even you said something like that) and /me as a customer wants to see
specs for the devices. So? Comply or die, dear vendor.

(Oh, I'm to buy a new laptop at some time. Any hints for a good machine?
Fully supported and not-that-much sucking? The sparc boxes from tadpole
look nice...)

> But other vendors are also still releasing new native linux drivers, 
> despite the availability of our solutions (Intel's project for Centrino 
> at ipw2100.sourceforge.net is a great example).

It's nice if they actually work on drivers (ie. the e100 driver is more
stable on some chipset-buildin NICs than the eepro100), but that
wouldn't be the final factor for or against a decision about a product.
Documentation therefor matters! If a supplied driver is commented very
well, I'd even accept that for docs!

> This essentially proves that we are not removing the incentive to do 
> proper native drivers, simply providing more options for 1) people who 
> would otherwise be stuck or unable to use the full functionality of 
> their machines under Linux right now, and 2) vendors who are not able 
> to afford or justify the cost of developing native linux drivers due to 
> the size of the current Linux desktop market. In general these vendors 
> plan to one day produce native drivers, once the numbers make it 
> possible.

I think that most vendors actually do have specs for their hardware. In
most cases, it should even be enough to let them leak at some time...
This way they'd probably sell more hardware:)

MfG, JBG

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