> Terry L Ridder <terrylr@tbcnet.com> wrote:
>> on various statements made. Until such clarification is obtained it
>> is clear that the Linux Community must take a wait-and-see attitude.
> Not to be presumptious, but please speak for yourself.
Right - I don't think there's really any ``we'' to have a (single)
opinion. What could happen is that
a) Intel et al. develop an UDI interface and drivers that work with
Linux. As long as the bits that go in the kernel proper are GPL'ed,
theres nothing ``we'' can do about it, really, and I personally would
welcome such an alternative. Linus may of course decide not to include
it in his kernel distribution, but if the code is well written and
clean, I don't see why he'd do that - and distribution makers would
probably include it anyway, if it means more drivers.
b) Intel et al. expects the Linux ``community'' to do the footwork, in
which case they can release the specs and hope somebody will care enough
to do it for them. Again, if somebody decides to, there's nothing any
``we'' can do about it, and Linus decides whether to include it in his
kernel.
In any case, I'm going to stick to hardware that is well documented and
that has source drivers, and will encourage anybody else to do the
same.
The only thing I can think of that needs to be clarified, is whether UDI
could be an approach to leverage I2O dependance into Linux - somebody
already pointed out the close relationship between the UDI and I2O
groups. I think the success of costly proprietary interfaces like I2O
is just about the only thing that could threaten free software, so this
is a scary thought - but OTOH I seem to be unable to find any logical
strategy that would lead to this end.
Although I'd love to see free docs of I2O, I don't think it's going to
happen. I'd just love to be proven wrong, but I just don't see it.
~kzm
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