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Mixed feelingsMixed feelingsPosted Jan 10, 2009 0:31 UTC (Sat) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648)Parent article: Open source firmware for Broadcom wireless adapters
I dunno... I have mixed feelings about all the successes that Francesco's team has had (and the open-source community in general) with respect to Broadcom adapter support. As more stable and versatile b43 drivers and firmware are released, the more Broadcom will likely be less willing to lend any support to Linux. Why should Broadcom bother giving the Linux community driver code, specs, or other documentation, if the community will just go figure it out on its own? I don't mean to dismiss or impugn the hard work the firmware (and driver) development team has had with Linux support; in fact, I'm happy to hear this news. My reservations are due to how Broadcom will react to this. I remember reading on Broadcom's web site a few years ago where they summarily dismissed any notion of providing Linux drivers and even encouraged Linux users to run NDISWrapper and the Windows driver!
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Mixed feelings Posted Jan 10, 2009 1:54 UTC (Sat) by nowster (subscriber, #67) [Link] Why should Broadcom bother giving the Linux community driver code, specs, or other documentation, if the community will just go figure it out on its own? Control. It's possible we might eventually do a better job of it than they did.
Mixed feelings Posted Jan 10, 2009 10:57 UTC (Sat) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link]
> It's possible we might eventually do a better job of it than they did.
I think this is hardly possible.
Hardware manufacturers are not to be trusted with drivers or firmware Posted Jan 13, 2009 14:08 UTC (Tue) by prl (guest, #44893) [Link]
It's quite probable that "we" will do a better job.
If the hw manufacturers genuinely open up specs, the result is usually open source that works better than what they can provide. There are many reasons why hw makers do not want to do so (the LinuxBIOS guys much experience here) - not the least being that they can disguise bugs and security holes. Also, hw vendors (particularly their marketing people) are obsessed with differentiation and Unique Selling Points - and most hardware is actually just like any other really, far more than they want to admit.
Remember that the motivation of hw vendors is to sell you their kit, not to make it work well - it only has to work well enough that you buy it, whether directly or via a system integrator. Open source developers and users want to make it work *well*.
Hardware manufacturers are not to be trusted with drivers or firmware Posted Jan 13, 2009 15:34 UTC (Tue) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link]
I'm not talking about OpenSource in general. Of course, OpenSource generally can be better than closed stuff.
But I was talking about reverse engineered stuff. In my experience, with the reverse engineered stuff you can hardly get better than the binary stuff it was based on. You can only get as good as the reverse engineered stuff and add a few more bugs. So you end up worse.
Of course, there are always a few exceptions to this rule. For example some BCM4311 flavours, which work better with b43 than with the native windows driver.
Mixed feelings Posted Jan 10, 2009 2:29 UTC (Sat) by Ze (guest, #54182) [Link]
>>As more stable and versatile b43 drivers and firmware are released, the more Broadcom will likely be less willing to lend any support to Linux.
>>Why should Broadcom bother giving the Linux community driver code, specs, or other documentation, if the community will just go figure it out on its own?
It's in Broadcom's interest to open up to the community so they get better linux support for their hardware. Broadcom's hardware is used by quite a lot of embedded devices , Broadcom supplies drivers to these people but if the open source driver is already good then Broadcom can reduce it's support costs for OEM's by pushing the development out to community. When the open source support wasn't good then it was a more risky decision for them since they'd have to support their internal as well till the open source version got up to scratch and they still had the possibility of them keeping their secrets. A good reverse engineered open source solution removes both these impediments.
Mixed feelings Posted Jan 13, 2009 23:31 UTC (Tue) by mlankhorst (subscriber, #52260) [Link]
I don't know, does anybody still remember the nvidia support for motherboards when it first
came out?
They only had binary drivers that sucked ass. Eventually it was reverse engineered (forcedeth
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