Great news! Linus himself has come out against this change, in a very strongly worded message to LKML. Here's a quote: "We should make decisions on TECHNICAL MERIT. And this one is clearly being pushed on anything but." http://lwn.net/Articles/214149/ I am reassured. Jeff On Friday 15 December 2006 17:50, Marvin Stodolsky wrote: > Jeff, > > RE: I hope that we can persuade someone there needs to be an exemption > for our situation > ----------- > Unlikely. > > But there is a functional alternative. > This is to follow the route which Sasha has done with slmodemd + ALSA > drivers and Alexei with the ltmodem --> martian transition. The packages > at > http://phep2.technion.ac.il/linmodems/packages/ltmodem/kernel-2.6/martian/ > will be the closest analogue for ESS and PCtel hardware. > > The general scheme is to move the pre-compiled binary component into a > non-driver helper application, and have a low functionality Open > Source driver be the interface between hardware and kernel. > > MarvS > > On 12/14/06, Jeff Trull <linmodemstudent@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > I just saw this on a kernel blog: > > > > http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/475654/focus=475721 > > > > The motivation given is to put further pressure on the makers of > > binary-only drivers to release source code. I hope that we can persuade > > someone there needs to be an exemption for our situation, where the > > binary-only (or binary-mostly) drivers are for hardware that is in many > > cases no longer manufactured. Given that the manufacturers no longer > > have any revenues from the products (and in some cases no longer exist), > > they have no incentive to release the source, regardless of whether their > > products work under Linux. > > > > Is there someone who can argue our position well on LKML? Knowing the > > orphaned drivers I'm helping to maintain (PCTel, ESS) may be banned from > > the kernel lowers my motivation to do any further work on them. > > > > Thanks, > > Jeff Trull
