Dear Fedora Community, what do you want?

[Nicolas Mailhot]

Le jeu, 03/06/2004 à 10:52 -0500, Scott Sloan a écrit :

> I know nothing is for certain (besides: death and taxes  :) but I would
> like to write the email just to get the issue out there. so I'm asking
> What do we want from manufactures? Just great stable drivers? GPL
> drivers? And How can we convince them that writing drivers for Linux is
> worth their time? 

I personaly want drivers with a FOSS license that are integrated in the
various upstream projects (kernel, cups, xorg, etc)

Feature-completeness is nice but not blocking at first.
Same for speed/stability.

The major part is releasing them under a good license and getting them
into the right OSS project. Speed/stability/completeness are a
side-effect of the code review that occurs at that time. So is the fact
*someone* will maintain the code in the future.

If any manufacturer is not confident enough in its code to get it
reviewed and integrated when its hardware is just released, how I am
supposed to trust it ? Or expect it to be updated once the
next-generation of hardware hits the streets ?

As far as I'm concerned, closed drivers (as good as they might be) means
future deadware, and me spending precious time trying to rescue it.
Closed drivers have no value - or even a *negative* one, since their
existence means the manufacturer won't spend time on free ones. They are
a fool's trap - even if you don't pay the associated cost at first you
*will* pay it sometime. As all the nvidia FC2 users are now discovering.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot
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