On Fri, 01 Aug 2008 13:09:21 -0400, Pavel Roskin wrote: > On Fri, 2008-08-01 at 10:58 +0200, Michael Renzmann wrote: > >> How about a "Linux Wireless Foundation"? Some kind of official entity >> that wireless vendors could talk to for Linux support, certification >> process for getting the logo, and so on. > > My concern is that giving any certification would imply that we promise > to keep the driver in the Linux sources. However, I don't think we can > accept legal obligations on behalf of the developers. Pardon me for butting in, but any vendor reading this thread would likely read "support" to mean user support, rather than exclusively developer support. An often overlooked-by-vendors advantage of fully GPLing a driver is that they can legitimately disclaim any and all end-user support in favor of the community. If they don't fully GPL, they still bear a user-support burden, regardless of whether they meet that burden. A formal WiFi Foundation specific to the Linux kernel would be quite excessive. There already is The Linux Foundation, which could potentially take care of any formal vendor liaison with the informal linuxwireless.org group. If certification is done, the most manageable way to do it would be for vendors not to be able to choose what they can say about compatibility, but just plaster on a logo with whatever number of "Tux"es shaded the linuxwireless.org assigns them. This, of course, has the disadvantage of requiring retailers to replace compatibility stickers on retail boxes if and when the compatibility status of a device changes, but that would, of course, be at vendor discretion. Come to think of it, the above could apply to *any* hardware… -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
