| |||||||||||||
On binary drivers and stable interfacesOn binary drivers and stable interfacesPosted Nov 10, 2005 11:58 UTC (Thu) by hanwen (subscriber, #4329)Parent article: On binary drivers and stable interfaces I think the issue with binary drivers revolves around the wrong point. The real problem is proprietary drivers tend to have plenty of bugs. They are often written by developers with little time and even less expertise with the Linux kernel No amount of standards, conventions, ABIs, APIs, etc. is going to solve this. Having a driver ABI just makes it easier for vendors to put crappy drivers up, and add a cute Penguin logo to their packaging.
(Log in to post comments)
On binary drivers and stable interfaces Posted Nov 10, 2005 13:12 UTC (Thu) by fenrus (guest, #31654) [Link] this wasn't so much about proprietary drivers.. those are illegal anyway in many of the existing cases.
the point was about drivers shipped in binary form (even though the source may well be available). Some vendors only want to ship "certified" binaries.. even when they are older and more buggy than newer, not yet certified drivers
On binary drivers and stable interfaces Posted Nov 10, 2005 15:04 UTC (Thu) by cooperstein (subscriber, #1139) [Link] I often have to deal with drivers which while written under GPL, arevery poorly written. Sometimes they may perform well enough, and not be very buggy, but they use all kinds of hacks to work with only one or a few kernel releases, and are almost impossible to port forward to even minor changes in kernel API and headers.
Overall I think this is a good thing -- by releasing under GPL
The "you can do anything you want as long as it is GPL" attitude
|
|||||||||||||