Wrong problem, wrong solution [LWN.net]

Wrong problem, wrong solution

Posted Oct 26, 2006 7:44 UTC (Thu) by lacostej (guest, #2760)
In reply to: GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper by gmaxwell
Parent article: GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper

So basically developpers are trying to put a technical restriction to solve a communication problem. That won't work.

If users, why not add a littel daemon that detects ndiswrapper, reports the hardware used, query a DB and report a warning to the user saying that a better driver exists ?

Users don't know about alternatives ? Let them know the alternatives.

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Wrong problem, wrong solution

Posted Oct 26, 2006 22:32 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link]

You presume a single agent where there are many.

Such a daemon would really need to be set up by the distribution, who are in a better situation to drive users towards free drivers in the first place, by autoinstalling them. Such a further steps seems a nuisance to me.

"I just installed NDISwrapper after repeated crashes from the free driver, and this stupid popup is complaining that I should go back, what a joke!"

Maybe that wouldn't happen, but I do not like this style of solution.

The kernel developers are -- via technical means -- conveying to kernel-driver developers what they believe is a fair manner of use of their code by proprietary modules. This is completely reasonable. The debate is in the details of how they go about it.