Re: Announce: ndiswrapper

From: Randy.Dunlap
Date: Thu Nov 20 2003 - 00:02:30 EST


On Thu, 20 Nov 2003 15:49:05 +1100 Nick Piggin <piggin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

| Neil Brown wrote:
|
| >On Thursday November 20, piggin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
| >
| >>You have to admit its good for end users though. And indirectly, what
| >>is good for them is good for us. Take the nvidia example: end users get
| >>either a binary driver or nothing. If we were somehow able to stop
| >>nvidia from distributing their binary driver, they would say "OK".
| >>
| >
| >Is it good for end users? It allows them to buy a computer with an
| >nvidia graphics controller because "NVidia supply drivers", and then
| >discover that support is only as good as NVidia are willing to make
| >it. I'm still waiting for some sort of power management support for
| >the nvidia controller in my notebook. If the driver and the specs
| >were open, I could possibly do it myself. On the other hand if there
| >were no NVidia drivers, I never would have made the (arguable) mistake
| >of buying this notebook.
| >
|
| I'm all for open specs, but in reality that doesn't always happen.
| (out of interest, are there any OS 3d drivers for any current cards?)
|
| I know what you mean, but I would find nvidia more at fault for not
| providing power management than no OS drivers.
|
| >
| >Ofcourse we cannot and should not stop people from providing the
| >option of binary only drivers, but I'm not convinced that we should
| >acknowlege that people who provide binary-only drivers are doing a
| >useful service for anyone but themselves.
| >
|
| No I wouldn't say that, I meant the Linux Kernel is doing the end users
| a favour by allowing binary modules.

that's questionable since we can't support them (i.e. fix bugs/problems
with them).

--
~Randy
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