* Darrin Chandler <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [070213 12:30]:
On Tue, Feb 13, 2007 at 06:04:08PM +0000, Jeff Rollin wrote:
On 13/02/07, Steven <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Free Linux Driver Development FAQ
> http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/13/0220233&from=rss
>
> Is this bad news for the OpenBSD developers efforts to free hardware
> documentation? If it is, how can OpenBSD users, and users of other
> FOSS, help?
>
Well as I understand it one of the things they are looking for are specs on
which to base their own drivers. Also as I understand it, they cannot work
under NDA's, so any specs released to them would be released to the public.
The guy announcing this put together a FAQ (linked from the /. article)
explaining that he has no problem with signing NDAs, but that the code
will not be obfuscated in any way. So it seems that he's not going to
push for companies to release specs.
...
There *may* be some companies that release specs for this. I doubt any
of the Linux people would dream of discouraging that directly. But any
companies sitting on the fence on that issue now have a great excuse to
keep specs locked up tight under NDA, while pretending to be "open."
So my fears are probably well grounded then.
So it seems like this does suck, not just for *BSD, but for Linux as
well.
Which brings me back to the question, what can an OpenBSD/open
source/free software user do about it?
--
W. Steven Schneider <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
