> I think you misread my technical statement as a political one. I > don't care about politics or the GPL, I just want Linux to be the most > stable OS, and that can't happen if secret blobs of code are allowed > to scribble all over kernel memory.
I have an additional argument against binary drivers. Some years ago, we had a server with a Highpoint IDE RAID controller. We bought it because the Highpoint actually had an "open source driver" tgz for it on it on its webpage. It turned out though that this "open source driver" was a binary blob with some "open source" kernel glue code around it (just like the nvidia and ati drivers). Anyway, too late to go back, we used the controller with the binary driver, kernel 2.4. After a while had to to upgrade to a 2.6 kernel, but Highpoint only provided a 2.4 driver. This caused a lot of trouble. Needless to say, from that moment on, we have sticked with IDE controllers from manufacturers that truely support open source. And with software RAID. That said, I do use the nvidia binary drivers. NVidia follows kernel changes fast enough, and my experience is that you will not run into trouble if you using a (custom) kernel that is not totally cutting edge. I use Ubuntu, and using the NVidia drivers with it is pretty straightforward. So I really do not understand how this can make someone decide to stop developing software for Linux. maarten
