Re: [GnomeMeeting-list] PWC driver story continues.

[Josep Puigdemont <josep imatge-sintetica com>]

On dv, 2004-09-17 at 07:15, Craig Southeren wrote:
> On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 14:06:27 +0930
> Malcolm Caldwell <malcolm caldwell ntu edu au> wrote:
...deleted
>  
> > (*) If I am not wrong it is easier to get linux to work with old
> > hardware than a modern Microsoft operating system.  If the hardware
> > company is not interested in creating new drivers who is going to do it?
> > Why should the hardware manufacturer create an incentive NOT to upgrade
> > to a new device?
> 
> I'll answer that question, if you can tell me why the kernel maintainers
> decided to remove a hook function that had been part of the kernel for
> three years.
> 
> Remember, in the case of PWC there was a maintainer who was prepared to
> keep supporting the driver at no cost, but his code was excluded from
> the kernel not because it did not work, and not because no-one used it,
> but because the kernel maintainers had a strong Open Source agenda that
> they could enforce without any fear of repercussions.
> 
> Doesn't this sound like behaviour normally ascribed to Microsoft?

What it sounds much like something "normally ascribed to Microsoft" is
to include a function I will hardly (or never) use, and that if used,
it's only by one single [Microsoft] application.
Couldn't this module use something more general? I remember someone said
the kernel provides other hooks to external modules. How does the nvidia
drivers work, by the way?

> 
> > There is a group of people who are responsible for the linux kernel code
> > (and we can see they even have legal obligations here).  They must be
> > able to say what can and cannot be included.
> 
> And that is one of the prices you pay for Open Source - your
> capabilities are set by other people's agendas, and because you have no
> way of swaying their decisions you must accept whatever they choose
> regardless of whether you like it or not.

You where talking about Closed Source, weren't you? This paragraph will
be true by changing "open source" for "closed source".
The difference is that with open source _ONE_ can  make its own
decisions, and include whatever one wants in the code (provided one
knows how), that's not true with closed software.

> 
> I still don't see why this is OK just because you have the notional
> freedom to write and/or distribute your own kernel (how many people
> could do that?

As someone (Johnny?) said, because they are liable, isn't that enough?
And you know that there are design issues too, like there where with
libpt plugins (which you'll remember much better than I do, probably).

> 
> > In the final analysis, I say that this episode shows the linux
> > developers to have been correct:  Now we will have a GPL pwc driver,
> > that will be supported as long as there is interest by people who want
> > to support it.
> > 
> > (Think of this: in the future pwc will just work, out of the box, with
> > any kernel!)
> 
> Unless of course, the kernel developers decides that Philips drivers
> should not be in the kernel even if they are GPL. If you think that is

Anyway you would still have the code, wouldn't you? So you can include
it without in your kernel, and if you don't know how to include it, then
you would not be compiling the kernel yourself anyway, so you're
probably using a distro, and I believe any distro would like to include
support for as many drivers as possible (provided they are stable
enough). Distros ship with heavily patched kernels and not the kernel
from kernel.org.
But if you are trying to say that we are at kernel developers' mercy....
well, it's true! so what? Maybe Microsoft will stop releasing bug fixes
for windows 2000? Or some day Apple will decide that if you want to run
one of their computers, you have to let them know what places you use to
surf, what movies you like to see, or what music you listen to... 
We constantly depend on others' decisions, like that of the guy that's
out there in the street about to shoot someone for no reason, but not
for this I shouldn't go out to buy my food.

> impossible, I can rememember when Stallman said that he was not
> interested in a version of gcc that supported the Macintosh environment
> because Apple did not use Open Source. At some point that changed,

If that's true, that was very stupid of him... because at the time
Stallman was developing gcc, how many companies where using open source?
(Although i believe he would have said "Free software") He was surely
developing gcc for a hardware developed by a company that was not using
Free Software anyway, so why target Apple like that? That was really non
sense.

> because gcc now runs on MacOSX, but there even used to be a web page
> that said something like "Don't bother sending contributions for gcc on
> the Mac because we are not interested in them"

That's really sad, but well, I also remember when Diamond said they were
not interested in giving specifications of their graphic cards to
develop drivers for linux because they were developing professional
cards, not for "aficionados".

/Josep