Kernel-developer Greg Kroah-Hartman has started a project to provide more drivers for Linux.
He offers hardware-manufacturers that free (conforming to the GPL!) drivers will be programmed and maintained for their hardware for free!
It seems that one reason why many manufacturers don't offer Linux-drivers is not that they are not willing to do it, but lack of know-how and problems understanding the GPL.
Within the first few weeks there are already 10 drivers in development, of which 1 is close to being integrated into the official kernel, and 5 more projects are already planned.
It seems this project might be successful in bringing more free drivers to everybody's favourite free OS.
But not only companies contact Kroah-Hartman, also already 70 developers contacted project Free Linux-driver development to help writing the drivers.
The Linux Foundation provides the Non disclosure agreement program, which is applied to NDAs the manufacturers insist on because they don't want all their specs to go public.
Kroah-Hartman does not see a problem with this, because every programmer would be capable to understand the hardware enough to maintain and enhance the drivers if the code is commented properly.
Although NDAs usually sound
Although NDAs usually sound like a bad thing for me, I would agree they don't hurt much in this case. If the result is more free/libre drivers which everyone can modify that's great.
I like what they're doing and I'm glad that there are already some developments there.
Let's not fear freedom.
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wow
Glad to see that this actually worked. Ten projects already!
Disclaimer: My posts may change (dramatically) within the first 15 minutes they're posted.
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