BSD and Linux programmers have had a lot of success in creating drivers for new computer hardware in a timely manner, but much of their effort has been without the support of major hardware manufacturers. Intel, Marvell, Texas Instruments and Broadcom, though separate and competing entities, seem by one consent to prevent non-Microsoft operating systems from working properly with some of their most widely-used network chips.
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Member since:2005-07-06
"This article is about the absence of manufacturer support for *open source* drivers."
The Battle for Wireless Drivers in Linux and BSD ... You are wrong , as usual and again ...
its for ANY wireless drivers.
"OpenBSD has been fighting"
Yes and GNU/Linux as been paying and obtaining the driver documentation that BSD's got to use.
Let me quote the article again :
"Theo de Raadt told me in an email, "Our efforts to do more wireless involves a few approaches. We reverse-engineer what we can. We borrow from other people's reverse-engineering lessons where we can, for instance, prism54.org is a Linux team, but their reverse-engineer work has resulted in knowledge which we can obviously use to write a BSD driver. "
"which has resulted in high quality drivers for *all* open source operating systems. "
Off course , they are GNU/Linux driver that got ported to BSD , like everything else they got this days , when are you guys starting to pay and pull your weight ?
"ndiswrapper wraps closed source windows drivers."
Yes , but they also document the integration and help working on the native solution from those observations.
"madwifi supports atheros cards"
http://madwifi.org/
http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility
Wrong again ... unless 3Com , AirLink , Belkin ... BIG ETC, got bought in the last 5 seconds by Atheros ...
"(which OpenBSD has supported for some time now)."
Yes , they ported the GNU/Linux driver and used the GNU/Linux documentation.
Discussion is over , its not **only** OpenBSD.
Member since:2005-07-11
"madwifi supports atheros cards"
http://madwifi.org/
http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility
Wrong again ... unless 3Com , AirLink , Belkin ... BIG ETC, got bought in the last 5 seconds by Atheros ...
madwifi stands for Multi-band Atheros Driver for Wifi. It's the driver for the Atheros chipsets. A lot of different companies use those chipsets in their wireless devices. madwifi *ONLY* supports Atheros chipsets.
If you're going to correct someone, at least use correct information. 
Member since:2006-04-25
Yes and GNU/Linux as been paying and obtaining the driver documentation that BSD's got to use. (snipped Theo quote)
As usual, you are stretching the truth. Nothing in that quote says anything about "GNU/Linux" paying for driver docs. What it did say is that sometimes OpenBSD uses Linux drivers (that were reverse engineered on Linux first) as documentation for their own drivers.
Wrong again ... unless 3Com , AirLink , Belkin ... BIG ETC, got bought in the last 5 seconds by Atheros
Madwifi only supports Atheros chipsets (which is what I meant to say). All of the cards listed on the madwifi website are based on the Atheros chipset.
Yes , they ported the GNU/Linux (Atheros) driver and used the GNU/Linux documentation
Wrong again.
"Also new in OpenBSD 3.7 is the ath driver for the Atheros chipsets, an effort led by Reyk Floeter ... Sam Leffler, an Atheros Communications employee at the time, developed a FreeBSD ath driver that links to a binary-only HAL object. Atheros refused to open the binary file, so through much dedicated effort Reyk reversed engineered it"
(http://kerneltrap.org/node/4818)
Also, the madwifi drivers use a binary HAL, so it cannot be included with Linux by default, due to licencing issues
they are GNU/Linux driver that got ported to BSD , like everything else they got this days , when are you guys starting to pay and pull your weight ?
Again, you don't know what you are talking about. Many of the OpenBSD drivers (atw,ral,rtw,rum,wi,zyd) were based on documentation, not reverse engineering.
Read the link below and educate yourself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Open_Source_Wireless_Dri....
Member since:
2006-04-25
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/
http://madwifi.org/
I guess your lying and wrong , but that's just me and reality saying so.
This article is about the absence of manufacturer support for *open source* drivers. OpenBSD has been fighting with some success at getting documentation for wireless chipsets, which has resulted in high quality drivers for *all* open source operating systems.
ndiswrapper wraps closed source windows drivers.
madwifi supports atheros cards (which OpenBSD has supported for some time now).