EC> In article <ABDFz0suqH@khim.mccme.ru> you wrote:
>> But Terry still wrong. There are is GPL and even more important there is
>> additional Linus clause about possibility of binary drivers for Linux.
>> So we have three choices for UDI drivers:
>> 1. GNU GPL'ed UDI drivers or similar. Linux community are happy. [Some] Unix
>> vendors are unhappy. [Some] hardware manufacturers are unhappy.
>> 2. GNU LGPL'ed UDI drivers or similar. Linux community are content. Unix
>> vendors are content. [Some] hardware manufacturers are unhappy.
>> 3. Closed-Source UDI drivers. Linux community is unhappy. [Some] Unix
>> verndors are content, some are unhappy. Hardware manufacturers are
>> happy.
EC> But you can release a UDI driver simultaneously under two
EC> different licenses. So everyone can be happy.
Not at all. LGPL will be 100% enough for such purposes. Even preferred. Problem
is only for manufacturers: they are effectively forced to give away specs for
hardware without NDA's. This is EXACTLY what most of hardware manufacturers
dislike to do.
EC> I think it is in the hardware manufacturers interest to
EC> release their UDI driver under the GPL or the XFree86
EC> license because.
EC> 1) It costs them nothing. 2) It gets taken up in the
EC> standard kernel, which reduces the work for them.
EC> 3) It means they can sell to non-x86 (and later non-Merced)
EC> Linux users
EC> 4) Someone might use the UDI driver to make a native Linux
EC> driver which is almost certain to have better
EC> performance.
EC> 5) It makes them look good. 6) Non-Linux Non-mainstream
EC> OSs can use it too, without having to bother the
EC> hardware manufacturer for a precompiled version (if
EC> they use GPL then this applies to individual users of
EC> the other OS, if they use XFree86 licensing the driver
EC> can go into the standard distribution of ARM-OpenBSD
EC> or whatever.
EC> 7) People who insist on source for security reasons
EC> or other reasons can use the hardware too.
EC> 8) People will send them bug fixes, which they can use for
EC> non-source UDI platforms
EC> 9) Users who want to be able to file bug reports to Red Hat
EC> etc. and the kernel list will be able to use their
EC> hardware. I would imagine that the kernel developers
EC> will not want to waste their time trying to debug
EC> kernels that contain non-source UDI drivers.
EC> If the hardware manufacturer doesn't see this then we
EC> can recommend users not to buy from them like we do now.
When drivers just could not be used with recend kernel versions (as of now)
it's trivial. UDI will make this hard to do. Plus most Linux users in 21th
century will be "Joe Averages" who will not be bothered by such obscure
things and who will be sure that it's Linux fault if Linux constantly made
kernel oopses even if they are using buggy binary-only drivers...
EC> I don't believe in the doomsday scenarios, on the contrary
EC> I think this could usher in a new age, where drivers for
EC> new hardware are available immediately instead of several
EC> months later. It is often a frustrating experience
EC> loading Linux on a brand new machine, because being
EC> brand new it has new hardware, where the drivers are
EC> untested or unavailable. Three months later it is easy
EC> but people don't generally buy three month old machines.
EC> That turnaround time could improve dramatically.
Yes. But this will effectively mean for hardware manufacturers that they are
forced to publish specs for their hardware. I'm not think that manufacturers
will be happy to do this :-(( Of course this is the only disadvantage for
manufacturers but look like some of them REALLY hate to give away specs...
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