Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 22 Sep 1998 18:46:15 -0400 | From | "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <> | Subject | Re: Open letter to the UDI folks? |
| |
Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 23:22:46 -0500 From: Terry L Ridder <terrylr@tbcnet.com>
If we take Mr. Kevin Quick's statements as they are stated in the article it would seem clear what they want. The reference platform will be released as "freeware" ( I am assume GNU GPL since it would have ti link with the kernel. ) to the Linux Community, and the Linux Community is to undertake the "daunting" task of writing all those UDI device drivers. Once we have written them the commercial OS vendors and peripheral vendors will use our work as a "basis" for their work.
Yes, but that's insane. Why would any Linux developer choose to do so? I might write a UDI driver if someone paid me enough money to do so, but to do so for free? Why? Especially when a native driver will probably work better, and probably be easier to write.
I do not see it as harmless. If the Linux Community "buys" into Project UDI without getting I2O opened up, we are dealing with the same participants. Using the analogy that Alan Cox used, it is hard to shake the right hand of Project UDI when the left hand is on the binary-only sword of I2O.
I see it as harmless because if you are right about the UDI Project, it will simply never fly. The Linux Community is a volunteer community, and as such, no one can dictate to our various volunteer developers to suddenly start developing all of these UDI drivers for free. It simply isn't going to happen.
The I2O argument is a red herring. C'mon! There are lots of Industry Consoritums floating around. All of the I2O and UDI participants are also members of lots of other organizations: the IETF, the POSIX working groups, OSF, PCMCIA, QIC, etc. Does this mean that just because the participants of the I2O are also members of the IETF, we shouldn't use any IETF standard, like TCP/IP? This is pretty ridiculous on the face of it. BTW, there's yet another hardware standard of most of these organizations minus Intel, trying to develop a PCI follow-on that isn't dominated by Intel. (So there's no guarantee that I2O will even win out.)
We will help provided you remove your other hand from the binary-only sword of I2O. Please kindly show us two open hands.
We can't even really say this, because we can't force developers to develop under UDI. Hence, we can't promise to help. That's why a lot of the comments about the UDI proposal simply don't make any sense.
- Ted
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |