Re: Linux on the desktop - it's come a long way, but is it there yet?

["Jerry Feldman-2" <user=4@nabble.blu.org>]

 On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:23:00 -0400 
Ruben Safir <[hidden email]> wrote: 

> Patent law and fear of legal exposures for releasing with Free Software drivers 
> is a large component of the foot draggging on the part of companies to release 
> even specs.  This is particularly true of the video cards where they think 
> they are stepping on each others patents. 

I would tend to disagree. Most of the video chip people do not want to 
expose their trade secrets.  There are a couple of issues with drivers. 
The Linux kernel community wants Open Source drivers, but most of the 
chip makers don't want to release their sources, but they are willing 
to release Linux binary drivers. While at Compaq, I spoke to a network 
chip maker with respect to a Linux driver for their NIC chip used in 
some of Compaq's laptops, and the person told me that it was simply a 
matter of time. 

I don't think that patent law has much to do with the decision to 
release source drivers since competitors are certainly going to look at 
these chips, and they can always reverse engineer the Windows drivers. 


-- 
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Jerry Feldman <[hidden email]> 
Boston Linux and Unix 
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