What's this? "preferably in source form"? So you Plan 9 guys port from binary drivers? Very impressive.
I didn't write the Plan 9 drivers, but I imagine those who did relied on both direct and indirect (as in, an understandable example as Linux) documentation. Since Linux ventures further into undocumented territory than does Plan 9, I don't think significant mucking through some vendor's convoluted compiler output has been needed: the Linux kids have already done the dirty work.
What I keep hearing is that docs are wanted. Some driver writers outright refuse to port from source code, especially Linux source code which tends to be buggy and undocumented. http://www.openbsd.org/papers/opencon06-docs/mgp00017.html (That series of slides has some interesting insights.) I haven't checked, but I suspect that the FTDI devices have sufficient docs.
If by 'port' you mean hack some Linux fragment until it works with your system, refusal doesn't surprise me. Sans documentation, Linux fragments are the best we've got, and it certainly beats mucking through some vendor's compiler output. What makes the OpenBSD developers think they will get direct documentation? Do I hear the sound of naive, futile whining? Obviously our economic model is having problems adapting to situations so different from a time in which the printing press was the dominant information disseminator! But complaining like Richard Stallman is pathetic and ineffective. Physicists don't cry to God for want of a documented reality. Cannot the collective be studied as is nature? Collateral increases as the collective's power grows... and the collective is only getting stronger. So down the road, expect to deal with botches even greater than the IBM PC and Linux. Reverse engineer everything you can get your hands on. Richard Feynman once said that if he had to start all over again, he may have well studied the bureaucracy of NASA rather than nature, as the former seemed to compete with the latter in complexity.
Most people run MS-Virus-Server so why do we even need the Open Graphics Project?
Linux compiler input is a lot more understandable than Windows NT compiler output. Let the few people who use OpenBSD and Plan 9 use Linux as documentation: they should be happy they have at least that. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
