GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper [LWN.net]

GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper

Posted Oct 26, 2006 7:01 UTC (Thu) by dlang (subscriber, #313)
In reply to: GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper by drag
Parent article: GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper

he's saying that his scanner is able to work with a windows driver and the ndis wrapper. if ndiswrapper isn't available he has no way to use his scanner.

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GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper

Posted Oct 26, 2006 10:53 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

That's odd.

I didn't know people used ndiswrapper for anything other then wifi stuff. Learn new stuff everyday, I guess.

Like I said before though, I know that ndiswrapper has legitament uses. It's just that the kernel developers can't afford to have people ignoring open source driver development over binary blobs.

However, if they let end users get comfortable with binary blobs then they would end up being forced to support binary only drivers.

Intel 802.11g, Broadcom 802.11g, Ti 802.11g, Ralink 802.11g, Realtech 802.11g, all of these things have open source drivers for Linux, but all the time people are recommended to abandon everything except for the Intel for the ndiswrapper driver.

If kernel developers sit on this then they are essentially saying:
'Hey, your a dipshit if you release your IP (documetation, code, etc) for open source developers to write drivers when end users will just use the windows drivers anyways. Other guys aren't doing it and their stuff runs in Linux just fine, so why should you?'