| |||||||||||||
A bit lateA bit latePosted Sep 9, 2010 23:58 UTC (Thu) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953)In reply to: A bit late by cdamian Parent article: Broadcom releases an open-source driver for its wireless chipsets
The only light they saw was declining revenue from OEM's dropping them for lack of FOSS drivers. Dell, HP, IBM and most of the OEM now require FOSS drivers to win contracts. Without FOSS drivers Broadcom was being sidelined by Atheros and Intel at the major OEM's.
The only surprising thing is how much business they let walk out the door before complying. Take a look at OEM offerings and I bet you will be hard pressed to find Broadcom chip-sets in new Laptops/Desktops. They've lost nearly their entire market share in their insistence on not open sourcing.
(Log in to post comments)
A bit late Posted Sep 10, 2010 0:13 UTC (Fri) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
If you think about it, there's a lot of positives to talk about in this if its true.
OEMs making choices about open driver availability and having that impact a component maker's bottomline in a real quantifiable way. That's actually amazing. That's _the_ story to put in front of every device manufacturer from this point forward. Open your drivers...or lose business like Broadcom did. If its true and they lost significant amounts business revenue because of a lack of a an open driver for their chipsets..they are potentially the best spokebusiness we could hope for to make the case to other hardware companies to get with the program. Doubly so if Broadcom's business perks up in response to having open drivers available.
-jef
A bit late Posted Sep 10, 2010 0:44 UTC (Fri) by kragil (subscriber, #34373) [Link]
It would be amazing if it were true (I don't know).
The problem is that the only major thing where closed drivers rule is ARM graphics and for this argument to work someone has to move to have the first mover advantage so that others can loose.
A bit late Posted Sep 10, 2010 9:02 UTC (Fri) by bangert (subscriber, #28342) [Link]
yeah - but we'll get there too. you'll see ;-)
A bit late Posted Sep 10, 2010 17:27 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]
"The problem is that the only major thing where closed drivers rule is ARM graphics and for this argument to work someone has to move to have the first mover advantage so that others can loose."
"Let's hope the Linaro guys read this and come to the right conclusion. IMO ARM is hands down the most important arch for Linux."
The chief player in Linario being ARM and ARM having their own "Mali" GPU, it would make a lot of sense for ARM to get the ball rolling themselves by releasing specifications / helping to develop an open driver for Mali.
A bit late Posted Sep 10, 2010 1:07 UTC (Fri) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]
I doubt you will get anyone to commit to it, but I remember a tech interest story about a year ago that HP and IBM were beginning to dump manufacturers that didn't supply FOSS drivers because their corporate clients were demanding Linux compatibility and they had begun testing for it and adding it to specification requirements. Add to that a story only few months ago about Dell beginning to do the same thing and I did a little snooping out of curiosity.
IIRC Broadcom WiFi devices began disappearing from most laptops about 3 months ago (despite an apparent price advantage over Intel and Atheros). The Big OEM's Ink supply contracts infrequently (they don't like to disrupt major parts and carry multiple parts in their supply channel) but it takes about 3 months for a contract to hit the supply chain, particularly for manufacturers like HP that don't do JIT manufacturing. Dell part changes hit quicker, usually less than 30 days. And Broadcom was a big at Dell, holding court over almost every Wifi Sold by Dell for a number of years.
My laptop had issues over Labor day so I was looking at options at various manufacturers, one thing that surprised me quite heavily was the apparently complete lack of Broadcom Wifi at Dell now along with HP and others. Everything was Intel Wifi. This is especially surprising because in the past Dell has said there was a significant price advantage to Broadcom over Intel when questioned about Linux drivers.
I deduced that Dell has finally dropped Broadcom because of Linux compatibility, but that may not be the reason. Either way something has happened in the supply contracts to make Broadcom FOSS drivers, something big because they were adamant in the past they would never FOSS drivers. Maybe I'm over optimistic, but HP has been talking about Linux drivers being a requirement for a year or more.
A bit late Posted Sep 10, 2010 9:03 UTC (Fri) by bangert (subscriber, #28342) [Link]
so this is the quarter where intel gets to harvest from its linux investment. hopefully they are aware of it...
A bit late Posted Sep 11, 2010 8:31 UTC (Sat) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link]
Sounds strange to me: My Inspiron 8100 had Intel Wifi, my Inspiron 9100 had Intel Wifi and my Latitude C620 had Intel Wifi.
But then again, things might have changed since then (the C620 is three years old).
A bit late Posted Sep 13, 2010 19:30 UTC (Mon) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]
When I bought my 610 the Intel was optional for about $20 extra and the standard one was a Dell branded Broadcom chipset. Like me you probably selected the Intel chipset because of Linux. AFAIK the Intel's were always available as an optional "upgrade" (probably because Intel required it by contract).
When I bought the 610 and for several years later the default Wifi on all the Dell Laptops (that I I looked at) were Dell branded Broadcom chipsets. The typical upgrade cost as I mentioned was anywhere from $20 to $50 dollars. That's a hell of a premium on Laptop even when they still cost upwards of $1500 and it's astronomical with prices half that.
But as I said when I checked the other day (on the models I looked at) the Dell branded option isn't even there anymore (and that's astounding in itself given Dell's desire to Brand everything possible). I couldn't even find laptops with Broadcom Wifi chipsets (I didn't look that far, just at a few major models and Brands). That's a hell of a change from default on every laptop at Dell. This is anecdotal evidence at best but for me it's pretty conclusive when taken into account against Broadcom's earlier statements that they would release FOSS drivers when Hell froze over (I believe the actual wording was Never because it would reveal competitive information). I can't see any other reason they would release FOSS drivers other than as mentioned in the thread that they got tired of updating their drivers and want to pass the burden to the Kernel team.
A bit late Posted Sep 14, 2010 19:57 UTC (Tue) by Los__D (guest, #15263) [Link]
You are probably right, there is a good chance that I chose that myself, and forget about it later (except for the 8100, which was a Centrino, those required the Intel Wifi for the Centrino brand).
A bit late Posted Sep 10, 2010 9:58 UTC (Fri) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link]
I would guess it was rather more them getting fed up with the weight of maintaining all their own secret proprietary drivers (drivers which are used mostly in embedded situations - wifi APs etc.) and realizing that an in-tree approach to driver development saves everyone time and money.
Unstable internal kernel API FTW.
|
|||||||||||||