Linux Driver Project Status Report as of April 2008

[JoJo jojo]

Thanks Greg,

A few points for your consideration

a) Marketing the LDP project:-
You are missing the numbers, from the LDP propaganda,
numbers/statistics etc.
(even MicroSoft quotes things like TCO ;-) in their propaganda)

Someone may try coming up with numbers from git commit logs,
but how do we know, how many of them came from LDP efforts ?

b) You need to segregate the LDP targets into 2 categories
Enterprise endusers & Non-Enterprise endusers.
Enterprise endusers are the ones telling you, their h/w is
well/somewhat supported,
Non-Enterprise endusers are the ones telling you, their h/w is _NOT_ supported,

"Enterprise" segment is attractive to developers, there's money to be made....
"Non-Enterprise" segment is _NOT_ attractive to developers, there's
_no_ money to be made....

"Non-Enterprise" segments usually end-up  with only volunteering
efforts and thus suffer.
So I have to ask, what is the goal of LDP, target only "Enterprise" segment ?

c) Taking Driver support on a war footing
Please work to centralize the H/W compatibility list, every distro is
rolling their own...its all a mess
Start a major effort to Whitelist/Blacklist Manufacturer & Devices,
the Idea is as below
 - Centralize h/w compatibility support list
 - This list will have regularly updated list of _actual_ Brand Names
& model numbers
 - Users will use this before buying h/w (you wish !!)
 - Users will report incompatibility too.
 - Start rating Manufacturer based on its support for FSF/openness
 - Users must reward the more open Manufacturer based on this list by
spending their money.(wishlist)
 - this is based on the carrot & stick approach, your strategy only
uses the carrot approach,
   (MicroSoft uses both carrot & stick, by funding you or your competitors.)

Here also note that the "enduser" is involved, whereas, you are only
considering vendors & developers,
in your strategy.

d) is LDP for the benefit of all endusers, or just the enterprise ones ?
(just making sure this is discussed/answered)

e) reverse-engineering is _THE_ opensource way, (going back to the
time of PDP ?)
do you agree to the above statement, as a spokesmen for Linux as a OS?

f) putting 2+2 together,
 - If you care about doing something to help all end users (not just
enterprise ones)
 - reverse-engineering is _the_ opensource way
wouldn't it make more sense to mobilize your efforts to solve this
pressing problem,
with / without documentation being made available ?

g) there's a reason manufacturers don't bother with documentation,
they make a IC in a batch, and if they only have order for 1 batch
run, why bother with documentation,
just fab it and forget about it, is their attitude.

e) wireless is a mess because of FCC regulations, they want
manufacturers to limit the operating capabilities of the
device(frequencies), manufacturers figure that its cheaper to do this
in s/w rather than h/w, by making a closed source firmware. I don't
see how we can improve this situation unless you can help EU legislate
it away (assuming US is a lost cause)

I hope you will take the above into account, and improve your strategy for LDP.

-JoJo

On Tue, Apr 8, 2008 at 3:18 AM, Greg KH <greg at kroah.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
>  It's been about a year since the linux driver project was started, so I
>  figured that it was about time for a status report of how things are
>  going, and how things are going to be changing a bit for the future.
>
>  Thanks again for everyone that has participated so far, I, and all of
>  the Linux users out there, really appreciate it.
>
>  greg k-h
>
>  ------------