Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 30th Jan 2007 16:53 UTC, submitted by SEJeff
"Yes, that's right, the Linux kernel community is offering all companies free Linux driver development. No longer do you have to suffer through all of the different examples in the Linux Device Driver Kit, or pick through the thousands of example drivers in the Linux kernel source tree trying to determine which one is the closest to what you need to do. All that is needed is some kind of specification that describes how your device works, or the email address of an engineer that is willing to answer questions every once in a while. A few sample devices might be good to have so that debugging doesn't have to be done by email, but if necessary, that can be done."
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Member since:
2006-04-28
I hope you're right. I first thought when reading the announcement that there was nothing new about it except a great PR movement. But you might be right that this legal framework for NDA requirements might be what was missing before.
However, I have a question. If a manufacturer don't want to give out its specs, even if the kernel guy who writes the driver doesn't give them out, the open source driver will be there for anyone to look it. I don't know much about drivers and hardware, but I thought that reading a driver's source code was as good as reading the specs, if not better, to know how something works. Or am I wrong and the driver reveals nothing important about the device?