Neil Schneider wrote:
I remember when Adaptic didn't offer Open Source drivers, refused to
assist the authors with information so they could write one. BusLogic
was a competing brand and supplied good Open Source drivers for their
cards.
I'm glad it happened the way it did, but what if BusLogic only had
closed-source drivers (which allowed most Linux users to work fine)? Or
what if the market for scsi cards consisted of 95% who didn't care if
there were Linux drivers at all? That's basically where video cards are
now.
Server-oriented hardware is affected more by Linux-leaning market
demands, but not so much for consumer-aimed products. This is
especially true for things like WinModems, where the hardware is
basically a analog <-> digital conversion device. Here, the driver is
just as much the product as the hardware. With more and more
functionality being put into the drivers, it will be increasingly
difficult to get vendors to provide open source drivers.
-- Rick
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