Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: Announce: ndiswrapper | From | Valdis.Kletnieks@vt ... | Date | Thu, 20 Nov 2003 00:11:47 -0500 |
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On Wed, 19 Nov 2003 20:38:48 PST, William Lee Irwin III said:
> It's very much a second-class flavor of open source. They dare not > change the kernel version lest the binary-only trainwreck explode. > They dare not run with the whiz-bang patches going around they're > interested in lest the binary-only trainwreck explode. It may oops > in mainline, and all they can do is wait for a tech support line to > answer. Well, they're a little better than that, they have hackers > out and about, but you're still stuck waiting for a specific small > set of individuals and lose all of the "many eyes" advantages.
On the flip side, if I go back as far as 2.5.4<mumble>, I've had a lot more days where the open-source drivers for my Xircom ethernet/modem card were broken than days where my binary NVidia driver was broken. Also, the Xircom has been the cause of a lot more "hang before even single user mode" problems, and several times the Xircom didn't start working again until there was a complete overhaul of the Cardbus support, while there's not been that much activity on the NVidia patch on www.minion.de.
It's certainly seemed like I've ended up "stuck waiting for a specific small set of individuals" when the Cardbus support has broken (not to slight them, they're all great guys and do support the stuff) - how many people on this list *really* understand that code? And it's not just the Cardbus stuff - there's a LOT of stuff in the kernel that's only really understood by a very small number of people.
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