Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 24th Jun 2008 12:07 UTC
A constant thorn in the eye of many Linux kernel developers is the existence of closed-source kernel modules, most notably those by Nvidia and Ati, but also some file system drivers and other elements. Most of the Linux developers have been against these modules ever since they were first used, and in fact, bug reports originating from a tainted kernel are often disregarded and ignored. The kernel developers have now rallied together by issuing a statement urging vendors to release open source Linux kernel modules and drivers.
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RE[2]: IS the OSS community up to the task?
by DrillSgt on Tue 24th Jun 2008 16:48
in reply to "RE: IS the OSS community up to the task?"
Member since:2005-12-02
"How is it fair that a customer have to change his working hardware, because the vendor has dropped driver support? "
The Kernel Devs do this as well. I can no longer run my computer using RAID as they removed support for my controller claiming it was deprecated. Funny thing is it is an intel raid controller built on the motherboard, fairly common in desktop systems, and worked fine. Now, thanks to the Kernel Devs deciding what hardware people are allowed to have and removed support, I can no longer run in RAID mode. The computer is only 2 years old. I am not yet replacing it.
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Member since:
2005-07-06
How about the people doing the nouvea driver?
And you seem to be missing the point, if we have the source and nvidia drops support for a card or moves support to legacy e.g. no new features even if the hardware could support it, n theory another one could take up the job for maintaining the driver. Without the source code, no one could take up that job.
You claim to be a fair person, okay maybe you can answer me this:
How is it fair that a customer have to change his working hardware, because the vendor has dropped driver support?
This is not just nvidia, they do a good job on their driver by keeping hardware support for old hardware alive in legacy.
I didn't find it fair when I discovered that my soundcard (SB Live Digtal or something) couldn't be installered on WinXP after SP2. The hardware worked fine, creative's driver policy sucked. If I wasn't a major geek I would have had to buy a new card.