linux-kernel - Re: Free Linux Driver Development!

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Message-ID: <21d7e9970701301414s251b584mbee85ecd6909febf@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Wed, 31 Jan 2007 09:14:44 +1100
From:	"Dave Airlie" <airlied@...il.com>
To:	"Roland Dreier" <rdreier@...co.com>
Cc:	"Greg KH" <greg@...ah.com>, "Jeff Garzik" <jeff@...zik.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Free Linux Driver Development!

>  > There was a wireless-mini-summit a week or so ago, so those developers
>  > all know what is going on in that space right now.  They are facing a
>  > number of different regulatory issues, combined with lack of
>  > specifications from some vendors.  I don't think that the developers who
>  > actually have specs are complaining about anything right now.
>
> OK, one last reply before I give up on this thread...
>
> Sure, Ralink drivers will get upstream eventually.  But by the time
> the drivers get merged, Ralink will have stopped making the chips that
> it supports (or so I read, http://www.linuxemporium.co.uk/products/wireless/)!
> I don't think that taking a year or two to merge a driver is going to
> impress a vendor, especially since the reverse-engineered Broadcom
> wireless driver is probably going to go upstream at just about the
> same time.
>
> An uncharitable vendor might decide it's not worth publishing specs,
> since the Linux guys can reverse engineer the Windows driver just as
> fast anyway.

I'm sort of with Roland on this, the timelines aren't usually worth it
for a company to bother especially with complicated hardware, the time
taken to do a community graphics driver for any GPU where specs have
been available approaches infinity, unless the vendor actually does
the driver or pays someone to do the driver the hope of a community
supported driver reaching maturity while the product is still
available is slim.... for anyone desparate to start writing device
drivers, XGI have recently dropped a load of specs for their cards,
I'm not seeing anyone other than the usual GPU ppl step up an do
anything and as I said the time it takes a single volunteer to write a
GPU driver is a lot longer than the card...

Dave.
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