Some notes on Linux and free drivers

Some notes on Linux and free drivers

Posted Apr 27, 2006 8:54 UTC (Thu) by jmansion (guest, #36515)
Parent article: Some notes on Linux and free drivers

> But, it seems, they are not up to the task of writing a driver for a graphics adapter.

Perhaps not without access to documentation and examples that would be non-trivial for the hardware manufacturer to release.

> many, many Linux users have been very clear about their wishes for years

Huh. Are there many, many Linux users with desktops *at all*? More realistically a small number of vocal developers have been saying this. Lets not overestimate Linux' importance, its just an OS - and one that's hardly mainstream fro desktop use.

> There also is no defensible reason for keeping hardware programming information secret

How about 'publishing it externally will take effort and cost us money, and so will keeping it up to date, and we don't see a big enough return in terms of new sales volume'. Money talks and you know what walks.

You can see the pain Sun has to go through to open up all parts of Open Solaris: the hardware manufacturer may have to get permission from others to make a full release.

I can't see a *defensible* reason why Linux can't have stabilised kernel interfaces and accept third party binaries. 'Defensible' is very subjective - I don't particularly care if kernel developers are inconvenienced, for example, but I do care if I am.

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