<snip> Regarding drivers / hardware support...
I'm not a huge fan of abstraction layers, in fact I hate them, BUT - does there exist or could an AL (HAL) be developed to hide the OS from the driver so hardware manufacturers can more easily write drivers? For example, can a HAL be developed that runs on BSD that "emulates" Winblow$ such that any driver written for Winblow$ will "work" on *BSD? Granted it may not be as efficient as a native driver but perhaps it would have these benefits: 1.) Would work "good enough" for most people in most circumstances. Perhaps it's slightly slower (insert metric of choice) than a native driver, but all but the most demanding users (top 10%?) won't care. The most demanding users will probably take the time / effort to acquire supported hardware and have the technical skills to accomplish what they need to. 2.) Would give BSD developers a starting place for reverse engineering / engineering a native driver. Instead of making the hardware people write drivers for BSD, they write for Winblow$ - but provide the source? The *BSD dudes (dudettes) can take that and tweak as necessary. The hope is no one would have to do 100% of the work, especially reverse engineering without much doc / etc - that must suck! Something in the back of my head says there was / is something along this line already available or in the works, but I can't recall for sure. Anyway... I think someone else mentioned dividing up the "donations" such that one could select which development area receives ones funds. I think this would be a good idea... If I'm more interested in ZFS than wireless NIC drivers - I can contribute to the filesystem/ZFS area. Perhaps this would also yield more donations - if one feels there funds will be going to support their specific needs... G <font size="1"> <div style='border:none;border-bottom:double windowtext 2.25pt;padding:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in'> </div> "This email is intended to be reviewed by only the intended recipient and may contain information that is privileged and/or confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, use, dissemination, disclosure or copying of this email and its attachments, if any, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please immediately notify the sender by return email and delete this email from your system." </font> _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
