Messages in this thread | | | From | Michael Buesch <> | Subject | Re: GPL only modules [was Re: [GIT PATCH] more Driver core patches for 2.6.19] | Date | Thu, 14 Dec 2006 20:29:47 +0100 |
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On Thursday 14 December 2006 15:12, Ben Collins wrote: > You can't talk about drivers that don't exist for Linux. Things like > bcm43xx aren't effected by this new restriction for GPL-only drivers. > There's no binary-only driver for it (ndiswrapper doesn't count). If the > hardware vendor doesn't want to write a driver for linux, you can't make > them. You can buy other hardware, but that's about it.
Not that is matters in this discussion, but there are binary Broadcom 43xx drivers for linux available.
> Here's the list of proprietary drivers that are in Ubuntu's restricted > modules package: > > madwifi (closed hal implementation, being replaced in openhal) > fritz
Well, that's not just one, right? That's like, 10 or so for the different AVM cards. I'm just estimating. Correct me, if I'm wrong.
(And if I didn't mention it yet; AVM binary drivers are complete crap.)
> ati > nvidia > ltmodem (does that even still work?) > ipw3945d (not a kernel module, but just the daemon)
> Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing reverse engineering, or writing our > own drivers. It's how Linux got started. But the problem isn't as narrow > as people would like to think. And proprietary code isn't a growing > problem. At best, it's just a distraction that will eventually go away > on it's own.
Well, I _hope_ that, too.
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