> Honestly what diffrence does it make ? We will still have our own drivers
> either way.
No, more companies will keep their specs secret. Many companies who have
open specs today only do because of our constant complaints. This gives
them a valid excuse.
> > The sensible suppliers have already released their specs. For them and
> > us, UDI is a winner. For suppliers who want to keep their interfaces
> > secret, they win, we lose.
>
> *bzzt*
> They win anyways... why ? Bacause they don't have to care about us. It's
Linux is growing. Any company who choses to ignore 7.5+ million people
because they are unwilling to consider releasing their specs is stupid.
There is no real reason to keep the specs closed. With the growth of
Linux, most companies will have open specs in not too long, unless UDI
derails this.
> easy to make it rich just on MS operating systems.
It may not be in the future.
> This offers us the
> backing of commercial unix vendors, and offers the commercial usix vendors
> the ability to use linux 7.5 million users as clout when they ask for
> drivers. Were not "corporate" enough and their userbase is too small to
> get a responce.
Close drivers are worse then no drivers. If someone has to beg for them
they will be of the lowest quality. Not to mention this gives these
vendors control over Linux. What happens if the sucessor to PCI's driver
becomes UDI and Intel decides to charge $$$ for the UDI per seat..
If they want our mass, then they can ask the companies for the specs and
say this will allow both them and us to make drivers.
> This isn't us vs the other Unix people.
True. If they want our drivers, they can go GNU GPL. :)
> This isn't us vs the harware maufacturers.
Hardware manufactures that dont release specs are worse then MS.
> This is us vs Microsoft...
MS locked the market with closed specs on their software API. This would
be no differnt then locking the market with closed specs on your hardware.
> SCO, Sun etc seem to see this, it's time we did too.
> I've seen people attacking SCO etc and that's just silly, this move to
> unite resources is a good thing.
If it's purely US vs MS then why dont these vendors share the code for
their kernels with us under the GPL so we can share all code equally?
Because it's not all of US against MS. It's each one of them against MS,
and they have realized that we are the only ones that can succede against
MS so they have decided they want to hitch a ride.
> Honestltly .. What diffrence does it make if we have source for each and
> every obscure driver? If the harware maker screws up in the driver it's
> their fault, it doen't point to linux at all.
Yes it does! If the driver makes your computer mysteriously lock it sure
looks like a Linux problem.. What makes you think that only obscure
drivers will be binary UDI? What happens if most of the Video drivers
become that and the binary only MS equivlents are written better (because
of the larger userbase)? This suddenly makes NT more stable then Linux on
a wide range of hardware.
> The important thing is to get a descent OS installed by dafault on the PC,
> we can hash the rest out later. :)
It's important not to put closed hardware into the PC, we can hash out the
OS later.
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