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

Jeff Garzik
2004-04-30T08:04:49Z

Marc Boucher wrote:
>
>
> On Apr 30, 2004, at 12:43 AM, Sean Estabrooks wrote:
>
>>
>> Dear Marc,
>>
>> Who decided that the goal was to become ubiquitous at any cost? How
>> are you so sure that removing the incentive/reward for hardware vendors
>> to release open source drivers is best for Linux in the long run?
>
>
> There are major chipset vendors out there who have managed to become
> market leaders while not providing any drivers for Linux.

I'm not so sure you should pluralize "vendors" ;-)

> 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).
>
> This essentially proves that we are not removing the incentive to do
> proper native drivers,

That conclusion cannot be drawn from the pretense...

It's strictly a cost-based function for a business. If a business can
achieve Linux support for free, without paying driver and support
engineers, they do so.

DriverLoader significantly lowers that cost, while not providing an open
source solution at all.

Jeff