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SubjectRe: Announce: ndiswrapper
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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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