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SubjectRe: Linux, UDI and SCO.
On Sat, 19 Sep 1998, Michal Jaegermann wrote:

> Erik Andersen <andersen@inconnect.com> writes:
>
> > I say we have everything to gain by supporting this, and little to lose.
> > We get binary only drivers for unsupported devices, and then when we
> > get a free driver that is better written, everyone will use it because
> > of the inherent advantages of a free driver.
>
> Why do you think that you will ever see a free driver? A pat answer
> will be "You may buy our binary driver which works on your machine so
> why do you need specs? Our driver is the best possible in any case".
> And of course non-Intel Linux crowd (Alpha, Sparc, m68k, ARM, MIPS, .... )
> will be screwed. You will maybe hear "Ah, those!" or maybe even not that.

Does anyone pay for drivers for Windows? I haven't seen any sources for
that. The cost of the windows driver is built into the cost of the
hardware whether we make our own drovers or not, I don't see that changing
any time soon.


Also :

>UDI allows device drivers to be portable across both hardware platforms
>and
>operating systems without any changes to the driver source. This
>significantly lowers the cost of driver development, speeds
>time-to-market
>of new devices, and allows manufacturers to allocate development resource
>on improving device performance, features and functionality. SCO held the
>first public demonstration of this technology at SCO Forum98 last month,
>running the same driver under the SCO OpenServer, SCO UnixWare 2,
>UnixWare
> 7, and the Hewlett-Packard HP-UX operating systems.

I'm starting to wonder how many of you actual read the post from SCO.
Cross hardware platforms ? Were did it say Intel only ?


> It is hard to predict what will happen but I think that the danger
> is real. Such course of events would drastically change a nature
> and prospects of Linux. Among other things it would pull it back
> strongly into Intel-only camp. How strongly depends on how many
> important drivers you get only in a commercial form. Once it will
> turn out that a control can be exercised that way you will find
> this situation more and more often.

I agree it can change the prospects of Linux, but why do we fear that?
According the announcement this was all cross platform. We should be
arguing this stuff on it's technical points not it's philosophical ones.
The anti corporate religion is really strange when you consider who is
sponsoring some of the Linux FTP sites I've seen around the net.

Gerhard


--
Gerhard Mack
irc-admin skyline.starchat.net

gmack@imag.net
InnerFIRE@starchat.net

As a computer I find your faith in technology amusing.




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