Re: DRM drivers with closed source user-space: WAS [Patch 0/3] Resubmit VIA Chrome9 DRM via_chrome9 for upstream

From: Krzysztof Halasa
Date: Mon Jul 20 2009 - 15:04:10 EST


"Andrey Panin" <pazke@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> * Users are still on mercy of binary blob supplier. Will this blob run on arm ?
> Or powerpc ? Or even x86_64 ? Will it be compatible with XOrg X.Y ?
> Nobody knows that and there is no gain for users too.

Actually there is a loss - users see the kernel (or partial) driver and
think it's open source solution. Been there, it wasn't nice at start
and even less nice when the thing chose not to work as advertised.

This was (is?) also the case with NVidia graphics drivers, I know many
people who purchased their cards thinking they are fully open-source
(because their drivers had to be "compiled").
--
Krzysztof Halasa
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