Free Software Foundation courts hardware vendors (Linux-Watch)

Free Software Foundation courts hardware vendors (Linux-Watch)

That is about the conclusion I came to.

On hardware I am told is that there is _no_ documentation, internal or otherwise. There is _no_ standardized interfaces.

Also if you want to get hardware drivers made in a reasonable amount of time (before the hardware is obsolete) you have to have assistance directly from the manufacturer in order to do this.

And to do this you require talking and dealing with engineers and internal development folks.

And this means NDAs. Simply because you need to have free communication between engineers and (free) software developers and as a company you can't have information leaking about future products and future plans.

This doesn't mean that you have to end up with something like the "nv" driver. Under a NDA there is no reason why can't be allowed to talk about (and document) some things (such as details about programming a paticular device) and not be allowed to talk about other things (such as next-generation devices).

So it's fairly complicated.

What the FSF people should do, in my estimation, is work with hardware folks to _create_ the documentation.

Also a 'Free Firmware' project may be interesting. Maybe determine what sort of requirements people have for their firmware and make componates so that it's financially attractive to open up enough in order to use the 'Free Firmware' then try to go it on their own.

The Linux developer-style approach is to make it attractive for people to work with you and improve your product to replace their propriatory stuff rather then demanding that they open up their 'IP'.

And you know you probably don't want it. Most propriatory software is going to be crap and it is probably better working from scratch then try to peice together what some other company threw together.