Le jeu, 03/06/2004 à 10:52 -0500, Scott Sloan a écrit :
I know nothing is for certain (besides: death and taxes :) but I would like to write the email just to get the issue out there. so I'm asking What do we want from manufactures? Just great stable drivers? GPL drivers? And How can we convince them that writing drivers for Linux is worth their time?
I personaly want drivers with a FOSS license that are integrated in the various upstream projects (kernel, cups, xorg, etc)
Feature-completeness is nice but not blocking at first. Same for speed/stability.
The major part is releasing them under a good license and getting them into the right OSS project. Speed/stability/completeness are a side-effect of the code review that occurs at that time. So is the fact *someone* will maintain the code in the future.
If any manufacturer is not confident enough in its code to get it reviewed and integrated when its hardware is just released, how I am supposed to trust it ? Or expect it to be updated once the next-generation of hardware hits the streets ?
As far as I'm concerned, closed drivers (as good as they might be) means future deadware, and me spending precious time trying to rescue it. Closed drivers have no value - or even a *negative* one, since their existence means the manufacturer won't spend time on free ones. They are a fool's trap - even if you don't pay the associated cost at first you *will* pay it sometime. As all the nvidia FC2 users are now discovering.