Cisco isn't malicious -- just organizationally-challenged
Cisco isn't malicious -- just organizationally-challenged
Posted Dec 17, 2008 11:22 UTC (Wed) by etienne_lorrain@yahoo.fr (guest, #38022)In reply to: Cisco isn't malicious -- just organizationally-challenged by NAR
Parent article: The FSF raises the stakes for Cisco
So there is a linked-in wireless driver - probably closed source (i.e. not developped by Linksys, they just licensed it from another company) - and that is possibly/probably the reason the source of the whole product is closed.
People cannot complain about those two things at the same time:
1) GPL is too restrictive, companies should be able to produce/sell Linux derived products using binary only drivers (wireless drivers, windows printers/modems, graphic and video drivers, hardware RAID...).
2) The open-source driver for their well known chipset (from the list above) does not exists, is not debugged enough - is not working.
Because if the GPL system were working correctly, the offending company would have had to pay more for the driver (so that it could be released as open source) before they produce/sell their own product.
And so there would be an available and working open source driver for Linux for your own computer on your distribution.