On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 09:45:50AM -0800, Roland Dreier wrote: > > All that is needed is some kind of specification that describes how your > > device works, or the email address of an engineer that is willing to > > answer questions every once in a while. A few sample devices might be > > good to have so that debugging doesn't have to be done by email, but if > > necessary, that can be done. > > > This driver will work with all[1] of the different > > CPU types supported by Linux, the largest number of CPU types supported > > by any operating system ever before in the history of computing. > > > As for support, the driver will be supported through email by the > > original developers, when they can help out, and by the "enterprise" > > Linux distributors as part of their service agreements with their > > customers. > > I'm all for openness of device programming specs, but I think it's a > bit disingenous to suggest that all a company has to do to get a > driver written and supported is throw some documentation over the > wall. And it's crazy to suggest that the driver will work on every > platform and be supported by enterprise distros.
Why is that crazy, we do that already today with the majority of drivers in Linux. > Just look at the in-tree drivers: there are tons of them that don't > work on big-endian platforms, or have 64-bit problems, or have no SMP > support. And that doesn't even count drivers that are so bitrotted > they won't even build any more. Like Jeff said, many of these are quite old. > And there are plenty of documented devices that no one cares enough > about to submit a driver for. Any specific examples? I have a long list of people who wish to write new drivers but just don't know which hardware is not yet supported. > In the real world, a vendor that wants to make sure a device is > supported by Linux had better pay someone to write the driver and keep > it working. Of course, if the device is popular enough or simple > enough, docs are all that's needed, but in many cases no one competent > to write the driver is going to volunteer to do it. That's not true at all. We have a whole raft of drivers in the kernel that are supported only by the community (like the whole USB stack for example) that vendors rely on working properly. And again, I have a whole list of people who are competent to write drivers wanting to do so (myself included), yet do not have any new devices with specs to do it. thanks, greg k-h - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
