On Tue, Dec 11, 2001 at 03:11:41PM -0500, Nick Gimbrone wrote: > And while I'm on the subject... why is it that the IBM proprietary > device drivers need to be versioned to the kernel (creating all > sorts of havic for those who what to upgrade before IBM is ready or > even do their own kernel hacking). There is no reason (other than > perhaps some legal bean counter's) to not split that driver code > into a sourced layer which implements a private api for the oco > portion that contains all the secrets. The api would need (for > instance) to present a kernel data structure abstraction which that > oco portion could view as fixed... and the sourced piece need hold > nothing proprietary... again, simple straight forward > programming.... "its time..."
This is exactly the approach Nvidia takes in the PC world. And yes, their OCO drivers still suck in terms of stability, but at least I can build my own kernels and then get their drivers to run with my new kernel. Conceptually, it's pretty simple: an OCO binary object and a compilable wrapper layer around it that links it. C'mon, guys. Adam
