Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: [RFC] Small PCI core patch | From | Arjan van de Ven <> | Date | Tue, 22 Nov 2005 06:50:52 +0100 |
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On Tue, 2005-11-22 at 10:35 +1100, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote: > On Mon, 2005-11-21 at 15:01 -0800, Greg KH wrote: > > > If you, or your company is relying on closed source kernel modules, your > > days are numbered. And what are you going to do, and how are you going > > to explain things to your bosses and your customers, if possibly, > > something like this patch were to be accepted? > > I'm all about it, but good luck trying to convince ATI and/or nVidia ...
that doesn't mean they're allowed to not honor the GPL of course.
Also it's almost the same argument as the ndiswrapper discussion: as long as there is an alternative some of these companies (prolly not ati/nvidia although: see [1]) will stay closed, but once there's no alternative they'll just open up.
I can see the point of the argument that a change like this needs to be announced for say 6 months first in that feature-removal doc though.
[1] Both nvidia and ati have a way out: they can do the IP side (translating 3D stuff into card specific commands) in userspace and just pass the data to the hardware via a thin driver that just drives and controls the hardware. Sure it may be 5% slower, but it's a lot cleaner IP wise. X after all is MIT (bsd like without nasty clauses) licensed and allows binary components.
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