Possibly offtopic : Binary only driver

[Stefan Sonnenberg-Carstens]

Many thanks for your replies.

I got lot of them, even besides the mailing list.
Now I think mostly it is a "political" decision to made
by our leaders, mostly *every* solution will bind man power and
such.
I understand (and acknowledge fully) the principals behind the
kernel design and why it is crucial to have drivers open sourced.
But from a buiseness point of view, it not possible to open
anything for most companies (NDA, patents etc) and MS makes
it very easy to not have to under the Windows platform.
It is absolutely normal and daily buiseness.
I think even Linus must at some point need to accept that
there is a demand for such drivers, if it is desirable or not.
OpenBSD's Theo need to accept that even from Intel and
the wireless firmware.

Lawyers lead the planet, that's a fact, a sad one indeed.

Hoping for better times.
And thanks for all of your replies.

Am Sonntag, 21. November 2004 12:22 schrieb Arjan van de Ven:
> On Sun, Nov 21, 2004 at 12:18:03PM +0100, Stefan Sonnenberg-Carstens wrote:
> > Thank you for your answer.
> > Ok, even if the hardware vendor decides to open the driver :
> > Will it be included ?
>
> if it's of good enough quality then yes
>
> > In every kernel ?
> > In every distribution ?
>
> yes
>
> > For only a few (about several thousand) users ?
>
> we have drivers for fewer users ;)
>
> > Why is there no really *fix* api *and* abi for all kernels
> > 2.6.x ?
>
> because that stiffles innovation for too much.