Intel plans Linux support for Centrino (News.com) [LWN.net]

Intel plans Linux support for Centrino (News.com)

Posted Mar 25, 2003 8:51 UTC (Tue) by proski (guest, #104) [Link] (3 responses)

It looks like the driver for the wireless networking is going to be binary only. At least the reference to the Linus' interpretation of GPL suggests so.

Intel plans Linux support for Centrino (News.com)

Posted Mar 25, 2003 9:41 UTC (Tue) by davem (guest, #4154) [Link]

It's going to be binary-only almost certainly to make government
regulators happy. These wireless devices can be programmed
to transmit on arbitrary frequencies, and if an end user
can easily control this it makes the regulators very unhappy.

There are other wireless hardware vendors facing the same
dilemma.

Hopefully one of them will come up with a solution by which they
can GPL %99 of the driver and use some kind of "frequency" module
that users download for their country.

Intel plans Linux support for Centrino (News.com)

Posted Mar 25, 2003 15:17 UTC (Tue) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] (1 responses)

Read the paragraph right above that one:

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel hasn't yet decided whether to release its Linux work for Centrino as open-source software, McLaughlin said.

It looks more like they haven't decided. Now would probably be a good time for customers to ask them nicely to make it open-source.

Intel plans Linux support for Centrino (News.com)

Posted Mar 25, 2003 16:03 UTC (Tue) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]

A potentially useful e-mail address: centrino.support AT mailbox.cps.intel.com, and an e-mail response I just got. It may be helpful if others make nice, polite requests for full open-source drivers or at least the information required to make such drivers.

Hello Matthew,                                                                  
                                                                                
Thank you for contacting Intel(R) Technical Support.                            
                                                                                
Linux is supported only through ACPI enabled versions through processor.o       
library delivered by Intel to the major Linux distributions. A control applet is
not provided.                                                                   
                                                                                
Please check the following site for Operating system support requirements:      
http://support.intel.com/support/notebook/centrino/os.htm                       
                                                                                
Please note that not all the Centrino(TM) components are compatible with Linux. 
                                                                                
                                                                                
For additional information, please reply and we will try to assist you further.

Partial Translation

Posted Mar 25, 2003 14:17 UTC (Tue) by torsten (guest, #4137) [Link]

As a non-professional translator, I find it can be very difficult to translate languages sometimes. I shall, however, endeavor...

"Although the Linux support software for Centrino is working at Intel's labs, it hasn't been fully tested..."

We have the thing running with Linux, but we didn't want to piss of mother Microsoft, who can be a real bitch. We decided to say somethign now because the public statements by that whacky MP3.com/Lindows.com rabble rouser could make us look bad.

"full completion of the project hinges on the timing of requirements from computer makers,..."

We'll release it if we need to, but only to companies, who don't mind using proprietary closed software (if it means being on the cutting edge). If we just make the stuff public, we know the binary-only parts are really gonna' make the Linux whackos shit.

The end of a golden age

Posted Mar 25, 2003 16:18 UTC (Tue) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link]

We may be coming to the end of a golden age for Linux, when it was just popular enough but not too popular that Linux users were by and large able to get free software drivers for "most" of the hardware they wanted to use.

In the early days, Linux was so much a fringe that no company would bother either writing Linux drivers or making it possible for others to do so. Also, there were fewer developers writing those drivers. As such, when buying video cards or laptops or a number of other things, you had to be careful to get one which was Linux supported... and if it wasn't, you knew it might be quite a wait before it was (if ever).

Then, together with the dot-com boom, Linux got big enough that it was on many folks' radar. Most people had heard of it, and you were no longer considered a borderline maniac (nor somebody willing to solder in your machine) just because you were running it. There were a lot of people writing drivers for hardware, and Linux was probably just big enough that most hardware manufactuerers understood that some people might actually want to use their hardware with Linux.

Now Linux is getting even more mainstream. Blame it on the server growth, blame it on Linux taking over from "traditional" Unix, blame it on the intrinsic quality of the system, or blame it on a Microsoft backlash, but Linux is getting big enough that companies start to see the value in supporting Linux directly. And, they are doing so by releasing binary-only drivers, naturally to "protect their intellectual property" or some such. Which means that many Linux users-- probably not a majority, but the purists-- are going to be stuck back into a situation similar to the early days, where we just had to hope that some hacker was motivated to reverse engineer a free driver. Only, now it's worse for two reasons: first, the binary-only driver scratches that itch for enough that it really takes a motivated purist to go through the work of duplicating that with a free driver. Second, the climate regarding intellectual property has changed, what with things like the DMCA-- people reverse engineering drivers now are more likely to be seen as intellectual property pirates than they had been previously.

Perhaps I'm just being stupid, but it seems to me that there was a golden age from about 1998 to 2002 where Linux users really could count on most things being supported, and with free drivers. Linux was just big enough, but not too big. Now it's too big. I already swalled my pride and installed a binary-only driver for the LinModem on my laptop. I haven't yet given in on any video drivers, and will hold out on that as long as possible. But the purist attitude is rapidly going to become impossible as more and more companies support Linux by requiring internally developed binary-only drivers for their hardware.

-Rob