Linux Kernel Devs Offer Free Driver Development

schwaang writes "Linux Kernel hacker Greg Kroah-Hartman, author of Linux Kernel in a Nutshell has posted an epic announcement on his blog. This could portend increased device compatibility for Linux users, higher-quality drivers, and fewer non-free binary blobs." From the announcement: "[T]he Linux kernel community is offering all companies free Linux driver development... All that is needed is some kind of specification that describes how your device works, or the email address of an engineer that is willing to answer questions every once in a while. If your company is worried about NDA issues surrounding your device's specifications, we have arranged a program... in order to properly assure that all needed NDA requirements are fulfilled. Now your developers will have more time to work on drivers for all of the other operating systems out there, and you can add 'supported on Linux' to your product's marketing material."

How many

I wonder how many companies will be imprudent/progressive enough to take up this offer.

Re:How many

I would disagree. Linux drivers are not made since they do not generate profit, largely due to the small user base verses the cost of developing the driver. If there is but a modest cost of a dev answering a few questions, it may be worth their while if it means shipping another 200 widgets.

Re:How many

The key driver (pardon the pun) will not be how many extra widgets they sell but the the strategic importance to most companies of reducing reliance upon Microsoft's hegemony. If you are a widget developer, you do not want to be in the position of most, dancing to the unrestricted tune of Microsoft. You need some collective force to help push back on Microsoft when necessary, or to demonstrate the worth of new ideas which Microsoft may not have picked up on. Having a competitor to Microsoft (even quite a small one) is a massively powerful force in this.

Re:How many

That misses the point. A very large number of Linux users are in the position where they are consulted by others about what devices to buy. The availability of devices which will work with Linux increases a company's exposure to all kinds of user, not just Linux users.

Companies worried about IP issues should ask themselves if they are in the hardware business or the software business. If their objective is to sell more gizzmos, then opening the API to developers is an excellent way to sell more product.

If a company is concerned about the number of questions they'll be asked by the developers, then (a) they don't know the software business, and (b) they should take a long, hard look at the quality of their documentation.

The biggest problem is that many companies are already making so much from selling their gizzmos to Windows users not to need to sell them to Mac or Linux users as well, even though it takes no significant effort to do so. The extra profit, even at virtually 100% per unit) simply isn't attractive.

seems like a good idea

Seems like a good idea, but it also seems like it would give the device manufacturers an out. "I'm sorry, but we don't officially support the linux operating system". This way they get drivers written for them for free, and don't need to provide any tech support for the device to those users who purchase it for linux. Anyone else see this happening?

Re:seems like a good idea

No, those drivers would most likely be written by the community anyways.

To me it seems more like an initiative to figure out which companies use "we don't have the staff/resources for an open driver" to keep their drivers proprietary.

Re:seems like a good idea

Another way of looking at it would be as formalising the rule that "if you give us specifications, the driver will get written". A lot of the problems with free software drivers is lack of information on how a device works; if this makes it better known that all they have to do is provide some specification, it might encourage companies to submit more of them, and encourage customers to ask people to submit more of them.

Re:seems like a good idea

You'll need a big cluebat to get a lot of these companies to wise up. The real reason that they don't give out programming interface information is because they're listening to a lot of IP Lawyers that tell them they have to keep everything secret or it might affect future patentability of future devices (YES, I've seen that A LOT lately, doing Linux driver consulting for some of the crowd willing to do proprietary driver work...), etc.

It's a mixture of worries about revealing possible Patent infringements, trying to slavishly follow the lawyer's advice, and a confusion as to what business they are precisely in (Software versus hardware- a lot of companies, because of the advice of their IP lawyers are confused as to what they should be doing...).

Re:seems like a good idea

It might give the device manufacturers an out but, more importantly, won't it equally give the Linux family an 'in'?

The point isn't, so far as I can see, to make any profit from the scheme other than to spread the word of Linux and increase the potential compatibilities/reduce the incompatibilities.

Plus, as a bonus for the device driver writers, it's an impressive CV when you consider the varieties of hardware that are supported by the various Linux distros and the work, and potential elegance, that goes into solving the various demands.

It seems win-win for everyone, really. And a good, and generous, idea.

Re:seems like a good idea

The point isn't, so far as I can see, to make any profit from the scheme other than to spread the word of Linux and increase the potential compatibilities/reduce the incompatibilities.

In fact, this is how it's always worked --- people have been asking companies for device information for years. (I did, once; I wanted the specs for a SIM reader device so I could do a Linux driver. Did I get a response? Did I hell.) The only difference is that this announcement rephrases things in a rather more marketspeak and official manner. Instead of the companies doing us a favour, by providing hardware specs, we are now doing them a favour, by writing their drivers for them.

It's a rather neat bit of lateral thinking.

Hardware ?

"All that is needed is some kind of specification that describes how your device works". They also need some real hardware to test the brand new written drivers. Specifications are not enough. Who will test the real hardware with the fresh drivers in a real-world operation ?

Re:Hardware ?

from tfa

A few sample devices might be good to have so that debugging doesn't have to be done by email, but if necessary, that can be done.

Dedicated

Whatever you might say about the Linux community - that it is elitist or sanctimonious or whatever - it is impossible to ignore their commitment to what they believe in. That somebody would be willing to write device drivers for nothing, apparently just to forward the cause of a free operating system, is pretty impressive. Microsoft and Apple can match this devotion only in the ferocity with which they defend their control over their customers, in anti-trust trials and by imposing DRM.

Peter

This is needed

I think this kind of action, and offer for help is needed by companies. I hope it will be touted enough. What I know is that, companies having really hard times finding skilled coders for developing Linux drivers. Most of them does not care about the specifications, as they have already patents pending for their works, but they can't actually find people to code for Linux and/or they don't willing to pay more than Windows developers for Linux developers for a smaller market.

Wonderful

What an outstanding idea! I especially like this (from TFA):

If your company is worried about NDA issues surrounding your device's specifications, we have arranged a program with OSDL/TLF's Tech Board to provide the legal framework where a company can interact with a member of the kernel community in order to properly assure that all needed NDA requirements are fulfilled.

This is intelligent, it means they're covering their backs, and even more importantly the manufacturers haven't got an excuse!

Is this realistic though? Are companies actually going to take this offer up? If they do, the impact could be awesome (hardware compatibility that could rival Windows and/or Mac OSX)...

Nice one!

Re:Wonderful

(hardware compatibility that could rival Windows and/or Mac OSX)

Hmmm? Linux already supports more hardware out of the box than Windows does. I'm not talking ancient SCSI cards either; I mean components like an onboard Intel PRO 10/100 NIC from a few years ago that requires an extra driver on XP SP2, but works automagically with e100 on Linux. The only segment where Linux falls down is on very new hardware.

Re:Wonderful

No-one seems to have commented on the fact that if NDA requirements are met the drivers cannot be open source. This doesn't mean fewer binary blobs, it means more.

And what about Vista's new requirement that all hardware mustn't be compromised by hackers or else the drivers will be remotely disabled? Might a company which produced hardware which is part of the DRM stack risk being more likely to be seen as compromised if it has collaborated with the OSS community?

Standard Driver Model?

I have never written drivers so I may be way out in left field here, but how close are we to being able to specify a standard driver model, with compatibility across operating systems? It seems to me that drivers are one of the biggest impediments to OS adoption. They are also a huge cost center for device manufacturers. Imagine if 99.9% of the driver code could be the same across platforms. Is this even remotely possible? Or perhaps the Linux Kernel driver developers could figure out a way to adapt Windows drivers to run, perhaps in an interpreted or emulated fashion, on Linux (ala Virtual PC). Just a thought.

Re:Standard Driver Model?

You've just invented OpenFirmware [wikipedia.org].

The only small problem is that it requires slightly more intelligence (and some flash memory) in the individual device - something which manufacturers have spent the last 20 years doing their best to avoid.

How will the NDA work ?

The Kernel code will be publically visible, so how is ''confidentiality'' maintained ? The only ways that I can think that this will be done are:

1. Uncommented Kernel code - Yuck!
2. Spaghetti/obscured Kernel code - Yuck!
3. Binary blobs in the Kernel - Yuck!

Re:How will the NDA work ?

Ranked in order of preference:

a) no driver for your hardware
b) binary blob kernel patch created by hardware munfacturuers
c) binary blob in kernel tree created under NDA by the kernel team (who have private access to the source)
d) obfuscated code in the kernel tree (with original kept private to those kernel devs that have signed the NDA)
e) uncommented code in the kernel tree (with commented code kept private to those kernel devs that have signed the NDA)
f) fully open source driver

Personally I'll accept anything b or above - I'd prefer d or above, would settles for c but would really like f!!

I wonder where the compromises will be made? How far will kernel devs go? How far will companies go?

Re:How will the NDA work ?

b) binary blob kernel patch created by hardware munfacturuers

Widely believed to be a license violation.

c) binary blob in kernel tree created under NDA by the kernel team (who have private access to the source)

Almost certainly a license violation. (Can't be distributed with the portions of the kernel written by others who have released their code as GPL)

d) obfuscated code in the kernel tree (with original kept private to those kernel devs that have signed the NDA)

Probably a license violation (google for "gpl perferred form obfuscate")

e) uncommented code in the kernel tree (with commented code kept private to those kernel devs that have signed the NDA)

Dubious to keep commented version seperate for the same "preferred form" reason as above.

IANAL.

Driver Management

The arguments about out of the box driver support for linux happen all the time. The reality is that the issue is not out of the box support. I often have more functionality out of the box with a modern linux distro than windows on the same hardware but that only gets me so far. The biggest hurdle is supporting less common hardware. Adding driver support in the kernel is great, but there is no way they can keep pace with the release of new obscure hardware. We need a way to support less common hardware without constantly trying to bundle drivers into the kernel. Also the kernel developers are not always willing to merge 3rd party code into the kernel if it isn't to their standards or is perhaps not 100% complete. I completely understand this process, but it doesn't help people who have to search out these drivers and try to compile them from source.

The best example I have is my webcam. I know that when I purchased it it would have linux support because i did my research, but I still had to know how to do the research, how to track down the right driver and then how to build it from source. What we need is a driver manager that operates similarly to or in conjunction with our package managers. If during install or after a first boot I was told that a driver for my webcam was not installed as part of the distro it could then either download a driver package if one is available or it could at least suggest a link to download a driver not yet being packaged for my distro. Having to check my dmesg to see if my webcam shows up as a generic USB device or if a driver has been assigned to it is a terrible solution, we need a more friendly means of checking a supported devices database and better way to get access to the drivers that support our less common hardware. This is especially important for people who don't hand pick their hardware and are less familiar with exact model numbers or sometimes know even less.

This system that manages drivers might also do well to phone home to the distro maintainer when possible to catalog all of the hardware that is not being supported by a driver. That way we can at least get a better idea of where the biggest holes in device support are.

This is definitley new

Other than the public announcement, how is this any different from the way things already work?

Actually this really is something new, and quite an announcement. It was never the case before that any old random driver would get created by the open source community. The way OSS development generally works is there has to be a strong need, strong backing, or a high fun factor, for things to get done.

Prior to this announcement it's not like there was a group of people dedicated to writing drivers -- just waiting for companies to release new hardware, then they'd scurry to reverse engineer it and write a driver. Nor do companies (generally) release hardware specs in the hopes that others will provide a driver for their product.

A significant portion of initial open source driver development comes from the device manufacturers themselves, and smaller companies without the resources to spearhead these developments simply don't have the ability to have Linux support.

Your conception that "The community already writes free drivers for vendors who provide specs and loan some hardware" isn't true in the vast majority of cases.

This really is a big change, because now anyone can create a hardware device and actually have formal linux support, and have this printed on the box. This creates a formal avenue for companies to easily, reliably, and cheaply have Linux support for their products.

Example of extending to other platform

As an example of extending to other platforms, we may cite the 3DFx Voodoo board.

After the company collapsed, users were left with no drivers for recent windows version (XP, XP64 and Vista).
But, the Linux drivers happened to be open source.

So most of the work you may see on websites like http://3dfxzone.it/ [3dfxzone.it] for Windows, is mostly based on libglide and Mesa3d for linux.
(This is also another proof that open-source enable something to survive beyond the death of it's parent company)

Another example may be the linux USB stack, which was later ported to both the Cromwell xbox bios and ReactOS (opensource clone of the Windows NT system, cousin of Wine project).