John W. Linville wrote:
On Thu, Jan 26, 2006 at 07:27:08PM +0200, Samuel Ortiz wrote:
On Wed, 25 Jan 2006, ext John W. Linville wrote:
I still have a number of other branches in the wireless-2.6 tree.
I was wondering what's the reason for not having the madwifi stack there
as well. I haven't seen anyone sending patches for it, but is that the
only reason ?
Well, at least part of the answer is "I'm not done yet". I am still
collecting code and figuring-out how to get it all into one tree.
But, the main answer has to do with the intellectual property
(i.e. copyright) issues concerning the HAL. My understanding is
that the HAL currently used by the madwifi stack is not available
under a license compatible with being included in the Linux kernel.
Am I mistaken?
It appears to be the case. It might be technically possible to
hack up madwifi as a module w/out the HAL and force end-users to
download and install the HAL (and taint their kernel) to have a useful
setup. That would go against much of what Linux stands for though,
so I doubt it would be acceptable.
If someone has a reverse-engineered HAL that might could
be used as well.
I think it is very important to get a driver into the kernel
which supports the Atheros hardware. At present, the driver from
www.ath-driver.org seems the most promising. Although, some have
expressed legal concerns about it as well. Anyone have any clarifying
opinions about that driver?
Are there any other options for supporting the Atheros hardware within
the kernel?
None that I've found.
Thanks,
Ben
--
Ben Greear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Candela Technologies Inc http://www.candelatech.com
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