Hardware features

Hardware features

Posted Jan 12, 2006 21:54 UTC (Thu) by wilck (subscriber, #29844)
In reply to: Hardware features by man_ls
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's Obviously Incorrect 2006 Predictions

So they will have no choice but to open their drivers.

That's the part I don't believe. The closed source drivers cost the vendors no more than a few developers. I have no idea if it pays off for them sales-wise, but it's a relatively cheap thing to do. Opening up the source is an entirely different issue. They may have licenced other companies' patented code, and they fear the loss of competitive advantage like hell. Most probably the non-free driver is some sort of cross-platform code, and they are afraid of opening up portions being also part of the Windows driver.

There are other devices out there, like cheap software RAID controllers, which need a proprietary driver top operate their disks in RAID mode. In this case, open-source RAID solutions being readily available, it makes no sense whatsoever to protect the code. Releasing binary drivers and keeping up to date with kernel development and different distributions, OTOH, causes their manufacturers big headaches. Yet they don't even think about opening up the source. And people buy their products (even OEMs who claim to support Linux) because they're a few cents cheaper than others. That's how it goes, I fear.

Still being pessimistic.

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