Quoting Brad Pepers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > On Monday 28 January 2002 03:57 pm, Greg KH wrote:
> > If they release a driver, with source code, they will not have to > > support any specific kernel versions, the kernel programmers will do it > > for them :) > > Thats what I told them in the email I sent to their sales department! In *very* many cases, they are not free to release the sources. Companies rarely develop their own technology from scratch. Much more often they buy bits and pieces and put them together to make their product. These 3rd party components are usually licensed for use only by the company that bought them, and obviously no open source for them... I believe this was the case with some IDE or serial USB chips. The manufacturer of the end user devices was not free to release anything because they only got the right to sell the end product, and the original IP holder had no desire to disclose anything (and why would they?) Forcing IP holders to open their code is not going to work, at least until the entire planet converts to communism :-) The current economy is based not on sharing but on scarcity of resources, and that makes secrets very profitable. Like it or not, but that's how the world works. So we need to have some easy way of providing drivers to Linux users, or else OEMs won't be able to support their devices or write drivers in first place. Diversity here is really bad (for OEMs) because a .sys file loads on every Windows/WDM box, but a foo.o driver won't work on any Linux kernel except the one it was compiled for (plus-minus your luck). Dmitri -- All theoretical chemistry is really physics; and all theoretical chemists know it. -- Richard P. Feynman
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