Date: Sun, 20 Sep 1998 21:32:47 -0700 From: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> To: Peter Jeremy <peter.jeremy@auss2.alcatel.com.au> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: More on the Intel-UNIX standard Message-ID: <199809210432.VAA03143@word.smith.net.au> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 21 Sep 1998 13:19:35 %2B1000." <98Sep21.131912est.40335@border.alcanet.com.au>
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> On Sun, 20 Sep 1998 00:26:18 -0500, "Pedro F. Giffuni" <pfgiffun@bachue.usc.unal.edu.co> wrote: > >I'm concerned about the SNR in hackers, but I just couldn't resist > >asking if someone was aware and acting on this > > http://www.sco.com/udi/ > > This was mentioned by some Intel marketroids at the recent AUUG'98 > conference. There was a fair amount of discussion at a subsequent > Freenix BOF (which included Greg Lehey and Peter Wemm within the > FreeBSD group and Robert Hart from Red Hat, as well as assorted > users from the Linux community and all the *BSD groups). > > The almost unanimous concensus(*) was that it was a very bad move and > the Freenix community should resist it. The major problems seen by > the group were: > 1) Binary-only device drivers are a bad idea. It will reduce the chances > of us getting access to the hardware interface specs, and therefore > being able to build a device driver that works. > 2) Binary-only device drivers tie the hardware to the processor. This > reduces the portability of (eg) PCI cards. > 3) The difficulty of supporting the kernel services required for a UDI > driver. > 4) Increased finger-pointing when a device driver fails. Unless there's been a sudden change of direction in the last few months, UDI is source-level, not a binary-level interface. This invaliates 1) and 2). 3) is actually less of a problem than many people like to think; unlike most other driver models (eg. WDM) UDI has been designed by people that understand the issues. I can't see how 4) makes for "more" finger pointing, actually. I'd say it would lead to a net _reduction_, as there would be only one driver vendor. > (*) I think I was the only person who felt it had any merit at all. It sounds like at least the major participants in the discussion were working on partial or nonexistent background information. The very first sentence on the UDI homepage is: "This is the home page for Project UDI, a multi-company effort to define a Uniform Driver Interface, which provides an environment for portable driver code, and to establish program plans for deploying this technology." *sigh* -- \\ Sometimes you're ahead, \\ Mike Smith \\ sometimes you're behind. \\ mike@smith.net.au \\ The race is long, and in the \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ end it's only with yourself. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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