Re: Call for evaluation: new Intel eepro/100+, eepro100/S open source driver (but not GPL). Is it stable, neat, or on it's way into

From: Gregory Maxwell (greg@linuxpower.cx)
Date: Sat Mar 18 2000 - 15:43:27 EST


On Fri, 17 Mar 2000, Alan Cox wrote:

[snip]
> > At the least, maybe we could pilfer some code (like the Adapter teaming and
> > fault tolerance options) and install it into our driver.
>
> We don't want adapter teaming and fault tolerance in adapters. Thats the kind
> of proprietary single vendor crap windows people suffer. You want to be able
> to team and fail over mix vendor cards.
>
> At most it will be useful for documenting how you access the rest of the
> features on the management adapter which we dont currently handle.
>
> I wish I knew why vendors were intent on duplicating working drivers.

So they can impliment the above mentioned propritary features.

It's a tough sell when you've got a $100 part which in a sane world would
be a <$5 part built-in the motherboard. :)

Perhaps once Linux's networking stack makes it easier to do neat things
like zero copy, and hardware checksumming type things the vendors will
fell less compelled to produce such drivers.

Further, if Linus hadn't made that stupid exception to the GPL, then we'd
be able to include the vendor driver (in the rare case that it's actually
better then the openly made one).

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