linux-kernel - Re: Challenges with doing hardware bring up with Linux first

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Message-ID: <AANLkTi=PQmAfNPFj9pytgP0yMX+B8eZ6Bg3KYwyZZsO3@mail.gmail.com>
Date:	Sun, 21 Nov 2010 14:12:25 -0800
From:	"Luis R. Rodriguez" <lrodriguez@...eros.com>
To:	Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Cc:	Greg KH <greg@...ah.com>, "Ted Ts'o" <tytso@....edu>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-wireless <linux-wireless@...r.kernel.org>,
	David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
	"John W. Linville" <linville@...driver.com>,
	Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@...tta.com>,
	"Perez-Gonzalez, Inaky" <inaky.perez-gonzalez@...el.com>,
	Charles Marker <Charles.Marker@...eros.com>,
	Jouni Malinen <Jouni.Malinen@...eros.com>,
	Kevin Hayes <kevin@...eros.com>,
	Zhifeng Cai <zhifeng.cai@...eros.com>,
	Don Breslin <Don.Breslin@...eros.com>,
	Doug Dahlby <Doug.Dahlby@...eros.com>,
	Julia Lawall <julia@...u.dk>
Subject: Re: Challenges with doing hardware bring up with Linux first

On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 1:47 PM, Luis R. Rodriguez
<lrodriguez@...eros.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 12:31 PM, Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
>>> Right -- which is why ideally I think it'd be nice to have an open
>>> permissive stack people shared. My preference would be to just pick up
>>
>> Which we know in practice they won't. They'll sit on fixes (often
>> security fixes) and tweak and add private copies of features. In turn the
>> Linux one could then only keep up by adding features itself - which would
>> have to be GPL to stop the same abuse continuing.
>>
>> It's a nice idea but the corporations exist to make money and adding
>> proprietary custom stack add-ons is clearly a good move on their part to
>> do that.
>
> I agree completely with you. Its up to companies to decide whether or
> not they want to do that and ultimately traditionally companies have
> preferred not to. I actually think there is more to it than not
> wanting though... As I see it without people upstream working for some
> of these companies its really hard for them to get these ideas and
> actually believe in the possibility of it and the benefits. I'm
> voicing this publicly to our own managers and lkml because I'd like to
> see that companies get the message because realistically I really
> don't expect anything like this has been *seriously* considered
> before. When I ask people about it, I often hear people say they think
> it'd be nice, but that's about it. Nothing more. No push, no action.
> Its to the industry's best interest IMHO. Even if a common 802.11
> stack was shared, if it was permissive licensed companies could still
> go on and hack their own proprietary crap on top if they so wish, so
> that would still be an option.
>
> My point with all this thread is this: companies tend to not think out
> of the proprietary box they have been put in by old driver development
> habits, and driver development should not be so hard and tedious. They
> should start considering working on more open solutions even for
> proprietary operating systems, under a permissive license. I suspect
> this will help out with resources considerations, bug fix propagation
> and coordination between supporting different Operating Systems. We
> also stand to gain from this on Linux too, after all a driver bug fix
> for hardware sensitive code will need to be propagated to other OSes
> anyway.
>
> I can surely ignore the other OSes and their IMHO their terrible
> software practices but I can't because although it only affects Linux
> in a tedious way I think we can do better and strive for that. If
> sharing an 802.11 stack seems like a pipe dream oh well, at least I
> think we should consider opening up the code for the other OSes and
> let communities help with that crap for our company. Let it evolve
> naturally. The benefits of FOSS cannot just only benefit Linux.

Maybe what we need is a BSD guy at Atheros :)

  Luis
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