I'm sorry, but you fail to see the bigger picture.
> One thing that is needed is open standard. Writing an operating system should > not be about writing drivers for hundreds of devices. Standards should exists > for drivers. Like OSKit or I/O Kit. Hince there should not have to be Linux > drivers, FreeBSD drivers or Windows drivers, just Standard Drivers. I agree that having a standardised driver framework would probably not be a bad thing, but there's another catch - DRIVERS FOR FREE OPERATING SYSTEMS WOULD STILL NEED TO BE FREE! > The optimal solution would be if compiled kernel modules could be loaded by > any kernel that implements the standard, making them as portable as elf > executables. Absolutely no. There's a bunch of damn good reasons why the majority of the free software developers strongly oppose blobs (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_blob and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_hardware_and_FOSS#Problems_with_binary_drivers) - for example even if you don't care about freedom (which is, by the way, what gives you the ability to either fix the problematic module yourself or get someone competent to fix it) at all, using blobs means all the security and robustness of a vanilla kernel goes instantly out of the window (just try fglrx), which means you can simply stick with Windowns and literally save yourself all the trouble. Blobs don't belong in free systems, period. Keep in mind that if you're not having any problems with them doesn't mean you never will and no one else does and that blob having a bug tracker doesn't mean someone actually cares about you. The most optimal solution would be if hardware manufacturers finally realised how to properly cooperate with free software community and either started writing BSD/GPL/MIT/whatever code themselves and submitting it for inclusion in the next release of the component they wish to support or at least providing complete NDA-free documentation and paying some of that component's developers to write that code for them (because documentation availability alone unfortunately doesn't guarantee someone's really gonna bother). Read these articles to get a better idea: * http://airlied.livejournal.com/73115.html * http://airlied.livejournal.com/73337.html -- Microsoft has a majority market share https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is a direct subscriber. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
