Possibly offtopic : Binary only driver

[Sean]

On Sun, November 21, 2004 12:15 pm, Mike Hearn said:

> Somehow the X team manage to debug their server with binary drivers.
Somehow the Wine team manage to debug Wine when running binary programs
on

Both of which run under the protection of the kernel.

> it. Claiming it's not possible says more about kernel development
mentality than any unarguable fact of programming.

You're missing the point.  Nobody is saying it can't be done, just that
the kernel developers aren't interested in dealing with problems that
arise with
a tainted kernel.

[snip]

> Well, the exact relationship isn't really important. There are other
examples of problems with out-of-tree drivers (not necessarily binary
only) eg ndiswrapper.

ndiswrapper supports binary only drivers.

> A choice that makes nVidia avoidably uncompetitive in the Linux graphics
market isn't really a choice for them. Blame capitalism, don't shoot the
messenger ...

It's not capitalism per se, but unfortunate patent laws and other legal
entanglements.

Linux has its roots in open source.  All of the people who started Linux
accepted its limitations because of the power and freedom given by open
source.   Many people have since become involved who don't understand or
respect the foundation of Linux and are happy with binary drivers.  That's
fine, but don't expect it to matter in the lives of those working on Linux
for the reasons that made it important to the world in the first place.

Cheers,
Sean