Re: Linux, UDI and SCO.

Michael H. Warfield (mhw@wittsend.com)
Sat, 19 Sep 1998 13:13:23 -0400 (EDT)

Khimenko Victor enscribed thusly:
> Problem is following: biggest possible harm from UDI is NOT even from UDI folks
> by itself. The biggest threat is from hardware manufacturers. Without UDI we
> could demand specs (or open-source drivers) from them since constant change
> in Linux Kernel API means that it's not possible in most cases to use binary
> driver written for Linux 1.2 in Linux 2.0 or written for Linux 2.0 in Linux 2.2
> (and sometimes even not possible to use driver for 2.0.34 in 2.0.35!). UDI
> will change this (and it's not bad thing by itself). Unfortunatelly this will
> means that manufacturers could just write UDI driver (buggy -- "Unix is
> mandatory; we do not have enough resources to make deep testing of drivers for
> mandatory OS") instead of publishing specs ("You does not need our specs: you
> have our UDI driver").

Then the response is the same as it every was... Then we will use
someone elses board... Someone else supplied specs... Someone else has
native drivers to which we have the source... Why should we use your
crummy board and your buggy drivers when we have something better.

In other words... Use market demand to force them just like we
do now. It may be a little tougher if they already have a UDI driver
to answer back with but then we can hit them with: "Would you rather give
us the specs and have a community supported open source driver to sell
your board, or would you like to have everyone and their brother hammering
you over your closed source, buggy, inefficient driver?"

I do agree that this may more be a ploy to leverage our body of
drivers against the close source OS's but... Even if Linux supports UDI
drivers, who say WE have to write ONLY to that spec? :-)

Mike

-- 
 Michael H. Warfield    |  (770) 985-6132   |  mhw@WittsEnd.com
  (The Mad Wizard)      |  (770) 925-8248   |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
  NIC whois:  MHW9      |  An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471    |  possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!


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