Date: Tue, 06 Oct 1998 21:45:01 -0600 From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> Cc: Jerry Hicks <wghicks@bellsouth.net>, FreeBSD Chat <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: RMS on UDI Message-ID: <4.1.19981006213950.0432ab40@mail.lariat.org> In-Reply-To: <19981007113003.G27781@freebie.lemis.com> References: <361A6C34.4AD93BAE@softweyr.com> <Your <199810060324.UAA01937@dingo.cdrom.com> <4.1.19981006085422.04379a10@mail.lariat.org> <361A6C34.4AD93BAE@softweyr.com>
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At 11:30 AM 10/7/98 +0930, Greg Lehey wrote: >> I share Brett's (and RMS' -- imagine THEM agreeing on something!) >> reservations about Intel's motivation in this. I think most contributors >> to the free software community feel that commercial organizations should >> not benefit from free software unless they give something back. > >Well, that's simple: put it under the GPL and they can't. This is >really an argument against the Berkeley licence. The Berkeley license is much better for drivers. Why? Because it lets hardware vendors derive their drivers from time-tested existing ones, even if they DON'T open the source. This increases the chances that devices will work and work well. >> If, however, this encourages Intel or any other hardware company to >> be more open with specifications and other documentation required to >> write drivers, they WILL be giving something back. If Intel >> undertakes to develope UDI drivers for the various hardware products >> they produce, this will benefit FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, >> SCO, Sun, and anyone else who uses UDI drivers. > >Precisely. Agree. The interchangeability of the drivers is already a great step forward. Let's not scare the hardware vendors away from the idea by making them reveal their source. Many manufacturers believe that their drivers are key to their performance advantage, and/or reveal what they're doing in hardware to speed things up, so this is quite important. --Brett To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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