Clearance For New Linux Wireless Driver 113
An anonymous reader writes "The Software Freedom Law Center has given legal clearance to OpenHAL, a wireless component for Linux, based on their pro-bono review of the code. This announcement dispels allegations of infringement on Atheros' proprietary HAL software. 'We believe that this outcome will clear the way for eventual acceptance of a new wireless driver into the Linux kernel,' said John Linville, the Linux kernel maintainer for wireless networking."
Excellent! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)
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"acceptable substitute when nothing better is available" is stretching it a bit in fact.
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Exactly. Works great for you. It only works for some BCM43xx chipsets, that's what's not decent about it.
Re:Excellent! (Score:4, Informative)
I have three different Broadcom chipsets supposedly handled by the drivers. One of them works well. The other two barely at all, with lots of dropouts and other problems. This on several different distros too. I invariably end up using ndiswrapper for stability and reliability.
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On the other hand, ndiswrapper works reliably, using the Windows drivers from the laptop manufacturer's web site.
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That's not native drivers any more than using ndiswrapper is, and legally on much thinner ice than calling the entire driver through a wrapper.
And, considering that bcm43xx causes problems for a lot of users (never getting full g speed, line dropping intermittently or even freezes), I can't honestly recommend it except for experimenting by those who live som
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The bcm43xx "drivers" aren't complete drivers, and require you to obtain proprietary drivers which fwcutter cuts out a piece of, and calls when running.
You mean like IVTV does, then (Which has made it into the kernel doing just this?)
fwcutter is based on reverse engineering, else it wouldn't know which parts to cut
Says whom? Perhaps (highly unlikely but possible) they ran a (Pseudo-Code):
I know, totally ridiculous, but possible...
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You are wrong.
1) fwcutter just cuts out the firmware. Most wlan drivers today need firmware. It is completely different from using ndiswrapper. firmware doesn`t run on your cpu, a windows otoh does. The reason they made fwcutter is that the license on the firmware probably doesn't allow redistribution (or, that there is really no license info available). So in contrast to what you are posing, the drivers are native.
2) Latest versions start to become much better on the few chipsets I own. Some a
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Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Insightful)
I've noticed that when an application or gadget doesn't work well on MS Windows, people blame the application or the gadget, not Windows. But those same people blame Linux for every application/gadgets shortcomings.
There are more Desktops running Linux everyday though and one day vendors will start to realize that when their hardware "doesn't work" on Linux *a lot* of people will see that as a reflection of their product, not the Linux Kernel.
For myself, I don't even address driver stability in conversation anymore, I just go straight to "vendor x makes crap hardware".
Re:Excellent! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Although hardware and driver design can be tightly coupled, the quality of one does not imply anything about the quality of the other. For example, I've always considered Nvidia to make pretty good hardware. For a really long time, they did not provide a Linux driver. By your logic, it would seem, "Nvidia made crap hardware." Right up until someone decided to flip a switch and loose their driver upon the Linux community. By your reasoning, flipping
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"But it's not a hardware problem."
No kidding. Did anything in my comment imply that I do not understand this? My comment was about market forces, consumer pressure on Vendors to perform when it comes to support what I argue (in the same comment) is an operating system that is becoming more mainstream everyday. This is a trend that Linux does not share with BSD, Win95, Amiga, and the Commodore Vic20.
In other words I'm suggesting that IF it is reasonable for a consumer to expect his web
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No kidding. Did anything in my comment imply that I do not understand this?
Yes. I think it was the part where you said:
I just go straight to "vendor x makes crap hardware".
I read your entire post the first time. You certainly made clear that you know what the problem is, right up until the last statement. My Nvidia analogy should have indicated that I understood that--i.e. flipping a switch magically made the hardware not crap anymore. The problem is that you seem to put forth information which may be a false conclusion based on poor analysis. You'll say "X makes crap hardware" when it's not necessarily the hardware that's at
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"I just go straight to..." is obviously skipping a step. Nothing vague, no indication that I"m unaware of the step I skipped.
"you favorite OS.." carries an implication of niche, which I have emphatically denied. It is not "favorite os", it is an O/S that *was* niche, but now is *not*. I'll frame my own rhetoric, thanks.
If someone using Windows bitched about his dongle not working and he blamed the manufacturer for sell him junk, you would not be harping on him (I assert).
I AM ARGUING THAT LINUX HAS
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If someone using Windows bitched about his dongle not working and he blamed the manufacturer for sell him junk, you would not be harping on him (I assert).
It may be true for a lot of people, because Windows is such a dominant OS. I, however, acknowledge the difference.
Back when I still ran Windows, I had the displeasure of owning an ATI All-in-Wonder graphics card. Periodic reinstalls were a chore, because the drivers were quite unstable. Install them in the wrong order, and pieces of your card wouldn't work (video capture, perhaps, or syncing with audio.) Install them before certain codecs were installed in Windows and the driver seemingly failed to und
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x = "NETGEAR"
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Hope that helps.
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But the worst part is that I saw this problem coming well before I bought the laptop, but since wireless is on a mini pci-e bus I thought I could simply replace it with a (hopefully) better supported card. But an Intel 3945ABG card doesn't seem to work on this machine, even worse is that HP's helpdesk just sucks (your time and energy) if y
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$ cat
model name : Genuine Intel(R) CPU T2250 @ 1.73GHz
model name : Genuine Intel(R) CPU T2250 @ 1.73GHz
$ uname -srv
Linux 2.6.22-8-generic #1 SMP Thu Jul 12 15:59:45 GMT 2007
$ lsmod | grep bcm43xx
bcm43xx 127336 0
ieee80211softmac 31360 1 bcm43xx
ieee80211 35656 2 bcm43xx,ieee80211softmac
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At the very least, some o
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But *definitely* don'
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They also have a large list of supported hardware on their site http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility [madwifi.org]
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Correction, the open source Realtek driver (r818x) is broken. I cannot get my Realtek to work with it. Nor does it work with the latest version of the Windows driver and multiple versions of ndiswrapper. The r818x driver is on Ubuntu's blacklist (/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist) because of its sad state. Seams that the open source driver is not supported anymore. I strongly recommend people not to purchase Realtek based cards.
That is true, the r818x driver is most certainly broken. Though it is *NOT* for lack of specs and information from Realtek, which actually provided a lot of support. It is mainly that the maintainer of the Realtek drivers stopped working on them and nobody picked it up again until very recently. There is now active development ongoing at: http://rtl-wifi.sf.net/ [sf.net]
See their History page for more info on the drivers: http://rtl-wifi.sourceforge.net/wiki/History [sourceforge.net]
Go SFLC! (Score:3, Informative)
It is a sad day indeed (Score:4, Interesting)
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oblig (Score:1, Funny)
some history (Score:5, Interesting)
Polaroid sued, Kodak lost, and the opinions did not help them one little bit
or, would you bet your mortgage on the law center getting it right ?
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Re:some history (Score:5, Funny)
Sir Humphrey: "You know what happens: nice young lady comes up to you. Obviously you want to create a good impression, you don't want to look a fool, do you? So she starts asking you some questions: Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the number of young people without jobs?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Are you worried about the rise in crime among teenagers?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think there is a lack of discipline in our Comprehensive schools?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think young people welcome some authority and leadership in their lives?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think they respond to a challenge?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Would you be in favour of reintroducing National Service?"
Bernard Woolley: "Oh...well, I suppose I might be."
Sir Humphrey: "Yes or no?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Of course you would, Bernard. After all you told you can't say no to that. So they don't mention the first five questions and they publish the last one."
Bernard Woolley: "Is that really what they do?"
Sir Humphrey: "Well, not the reputable ones no, but there aren't many of those. So alternatively the young lady can get the opposite result."
Bernard Woolley: "How?"
Sir Humphrey: "Mr. Woolley, are you worried about the danger of war?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Are you worried about the growth of armaments?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think there is a danger in giving young people guns and teaching them how to kill?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Do you think it is wrong to force people to take up arms against their will?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "Would you oppose the reintroduction of National Service?"
Bernard Woolley: "Yes"
Sir Humphrey: "There you are, you see Bernard. The perfect balanced sample."
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made great fun of some very dark topics. Pity the UK public were too stupid to see it as anything more than a comedy. I mean Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown have never run anything more complex than a corner shop and then magically they can run the country? Next you'll be telling me voting makes a difference!
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Public opinion is formed by the media, very few people are able to think outside the left/right of politics or indeed the good/bad of morals. The tripe served up in the papers and by the TV news is directed at those who have a comprehension age of seven. You think advertisers spend all that money because it only has a minimal effect?
The Blair/Thatcher governments were
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> stupid to see it as anything more than a comedy.
Err...were we?
I don't think I know a single person who watched the series who thought it was anything less than a very observant, expertly written & acted satire.
"Satire (from Latin satura, not from the Greek figure satyr[1]) is a literary genre, chiefly literary and dramatic, in which human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censur
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I actually like Major, apparently at his first meeting of his cabinet after the leadership battle his first words were 'Well, who would have believed it?'. Also when the IRA mortar bombed the cabinet office he apparently was ver
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> institutions really were and what happened? Has anything changed for the better?
No, it's become worse. People really weren't prepared for the spin strategy that is New Labour's (particularly Blair's) trademark.
Ultimately, I agree the population's at fault. Somewhere along the line people became apathetic, and stopped taking an interest in politics other than the minor interests that affected them directly. They div
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The problem with Major having an affair was not so much that he had one, but that he showed such appalling taste in who to have one with. Short of the queen mum his choice was about the worst possible. No spin, save confessing to a whole list affairs, would have saved him from public contempt. In a way similar to Clinton a few years later.
The point on lack of leadership was the lack of commercial leadership. Political leadership very rarely requires
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> appalling taste in who to have one with.
No disagreement here.
> The point on lack of leadership was the lack of commercial leadership. Political leadership very
> rarely requires the skills of state leadership.
I disagree with the current popular emphasis on the "all-knowing" commercial sector.
Commercial leadership, like military leadership, can result in a number of very useful transferable leade
re experts (Score:1)
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back in the 80s, kodak developed an instant film,and to make sure it was not infringing the polaroid patent suite, kodak paid for opinions from 3 seperate law firms. Polaroid sued, Kodak lost, and the opinions did not help them one little bit
I looked up the case you mentioned, and you're right that Kodak lost the case, however, Kodak's pre-lawsuit opinions likely saved them from damages due to willful infringement. In a patent case, treble damages are awarded for willfull infringement -- that's where the money is. While an infringer will have to cease infringement, and will likely have to purchase a license, only a willful infringer pays treble damages as punishment. By seeking outside opinions, Kodak likely saved themselves treble damages,
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Re:some history (Score:5, Informative)
If you willfully infringe someone's patent, you can get up to three times the damages you incurred. This is to dissuade people from knowingly and intentionally infringing on someone's patent and simply paying actual damages. (This would be a kind of forced royalty.) Having attorneys analyze your product, search for relevant patents, and study both then swear up and down you do not infringe argues against willful infringement.
Kodak's attorneys were wrong when they said the products didn't infringe, but they conducted a thorough review in good faith. The court found that Polaroid was not entitled to treble damages on these facts because there was no showing of willful infringement.
Up until 2004, failure to obtain opinion of counsel was a sign that you willfully infringed a patent you knew about. Now the lack of an opinion of counsel is just a sign you willfully infringed.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=ht
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Finally! (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's hoping this makes it into the kernel soon!
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Have you considered replacing your poorly-supported hardware? Fully functional hardware is readily available and cheap, there's no reason to futz with hardware from companies that don't really want your business.
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On one hand, if you are going to buy some piece of hardware, by all means prefer FOSS-friendly products: less trouble for you and a nudge to the market in the right direction. On the other hand, if you already own a fully functional but non FOSS-friendly equipment, why be wasteful? Reverse-engineering and/or demanding FOSS support are legitimate ways to put pressure in the market too.
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How much of your time is it worth to avoid spending $30 on a new wireless card? Are you going to waste other people's time too by complaining on the community support forums that your known-dysfunctional card doesn't work?
If you're actually going to personally reverse engineer the card and write a FOSS driver, that's great. My guess is that you're not going to do that - instead you're going to spend
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When I said "wasteful", I wasn't thinking solely in terms of monetary value. Of course, if you make $5/hr then a $30 card costs you 6 hours of wor
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If you're worried about wasting the old card, give it to a friend who runs Windows. Or sell it on eBay.
If you're worried about the environmental impact of being involved in the purchase of an "unnecessary" wireless card, then maybe you should chose to put more effort into getting it to work. It doesn't mean that you deserve any more sympathy if your attempt fails. Or sell the old card on eBay, and replace a new card sale that way.
Is there are good Linux WL HCL? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there a regularly-updated list around, anywhere, of what wireless hardware is well supported under particular distributions, and whether it has drivers in the kernel, or from some additional source, or requires binary blobs?
The problem I've always had is that whenever I go to a store to buy a WL card, there are always 10 different ones on the shelves, none of which I've ever heard of, and I can never find any of the supposedly-compatible ones around.
It's not hard to find reports where people will say "oh, yeah, my FOO3549 works perfectly, right out of the box!" but then if you try to go to a store and buy a FOO3549, you'll find out it was discontinued six months ago and replaced with the FOO3649, which uses some totally different, highly proprietary chipset, that there's no support for. (Heck, sometimes they don't even bother to change the model numbers.)
This isn't entirely the fault of Linux or any of the OSS driver developers, but it is a major fucking pain in the ass to buy Linux-compatible wireless cards, and I have a stack of incompatible ones sitting around as a testament to this. I've basically given up -- finally I realized that wireless internet was more frustration than it's worth, and I bought a 500' spool of CAT-5e plenum cable and started drilling holes throughout my house. At least running cables feels like a solvable problem. (Hint: the easiest way to run Ethernet between floors is to route it through the heating ducts...particularly if your walls are all insulated.)
But as far as I know, there's no good centralized repository of information concerning the compatibility of different models, or even of which models have which chipsets. It's all scattered around the internet in a dozen different wikis and forums.
Re:Is there are good Linux WL HCL? (Score:4, Informative)
http://linux-wless.passys.nl/ [passys.nl]
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http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_hostif.php?host if=USB [passys.nl]
at please tell me which of these cards are actually available in stores!
My guess will be a zydas or ralink* stick is eaiest to find. But there are only 211 "green" cards. 77 of them are Prism based (very hard to find IMHO). Further 9 are Orinoco and Hermes (really old stuff). IOW it is mostly old stuff.
But I just manages to find a store that has the Belkin 802.11g F5D7050 so maybe it ha
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Well, apparently that's what's supported.
I guess that's the answer. It's not the answer you hoped for, but it is nonetheless the answer.
Re:Is there are good Linux WL HCL? (Score:5, Insightful)
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They sell laptops with Ubuntu Linux on them [dell.com], too.
I was kind of annoyed at the way the original Linux program went. I was pleasantly surprised to see they were doing this again, and it looks like the price is not bad this time. They also sell systems with Freedos if you want. I think just knowing that the wireless stuff is going to work is a major reason to go this way.
I do
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The major distros all provide hardware compatibility info. Here's the page for Ubuntu:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport [ubuntu.com]
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-spend a lot of time to find a working chipset
-find the damn thing
-if you actualy get the chipset you were looking for and it is tested to work: buy a couple of them.
-Redo from start when technology or interface changes.
I do miss the pcmcia interface on my new laptop, what modern chipset can compete with the Prism2?
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I tried 2 drivers (first was plain wrong, and ndiswrapper worked for 15 seconds and hung my system) and 2 OSs (FreeBSD and Ubuntu).
Switched back to Debian, found out that the rt2750 driver would work and it did.
I just think that the usb connector is faulty and disconnects from time to time (or maybe the driver is not good enough).
oh HAL! (Score:4, Funny)
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Careful there fattmatt (Score:1)
Don't make me post the transcripts of recordings I have of you.
Re:OpenHAL or not the OSS Wireless drivers are doo (Score:2)
Re:OpenHAL or not the OSS Wireless drivers are doo (Score:2)
Generally if a Linux driver is closed source, its closed source because the maker of the driver does not have all the rights to give the source away, which I think is nVidia's excuse, or does not want others to see how it does certain things, which I think is nVidia's real issue.
While they may be upset if a developer guesses the "big secret" hidden in the driver, they would be pretty
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Please ignore the miss use of there in place of their (and whatever else I did wrong).
How does the FUD last? (Score:1)
Oblig. Simpsons Quote (Score:1)
Collin: I just moved here from Ireland, my father's a musician.
Lisa: Is he...
Collin: (laughs) No, he's not Bono.
Lisa: (blushing) Well I just since since you're Irish...
Collin: He's NOT Bono!
Re:Oblig. Spelling Correction + Oblig Wiki Ref (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin [wikipedia.org]
'Collins' with two 'Ls' is a surname common to Scotland and Ireland. Mr William Collins was a famous Scottish language dictionary publisher (now part of HarperCollins empire) and p
Linux? (Score:3, Informative)
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So, why is this article in the Linux category, when it's talking about the legal status of an OpenBSD driver that will eventually be ported to Linux?
You claim to have read TFA, but... don't seem to have.
The Linux Wireless developers asked the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) to investigate ...
...
"Our ultimate goal is to have full support for Atheros devices included in the Linux kernel," said Luis Rodriguez, a Linux Wireless developer.
Yeah, this is about Linux, not BSD, even though the driver was originally developed for BSD.
Obviously the BSD guys benefit from this review of their legal standing too, but that's not the point of the article.
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Is this a joke? (Score:1)
You don't deserve tinfoil. (Score:1)
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plus I just thought it was a funny coincidence.
--Whoops, did I say that? I meant:
I don't believe you, you must be one of them!
Mom!!? DoubleLayer the tinfoil!
So, the SFLC has cleared OpenHAL... (Score:2)
Does Atheros agree? On paper?
If not, queue the lawsuits in 5...4...3..2..1
Free Software HAL == legal? (Score:5, Interesting)
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He said "the legal range of spectrum", i.e. it has the capability (in hardware) to broadcast frequencies that are not permitted, and only the software prevents it from doing so. This has nothing to do with signal range, which is affected by power output and - as you know - antenna design. An open implementation that had frequency or power restrictions implemented in software would be a trivial matter to override. That said, I would be surprised if the fact that it's possible to change the code and recompile
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From what I understand
[..]
the current HAL is closed source because the Atheros chipset has the technical capabilities to broadcast out of the legal range of spectrum allowed by the FCC and similar bodies. Wouldn't distributing OpenHal be illegal?
I can search the Internet using Google with Firefox for instructions on how to do any number of illegal things. This apparent "ability to be illegal" has never precluded me from having Firefox (Iceweasel) in Debian.
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After all, the reason consistently stated by Atheros for the closed HAL is that the FCC would nail them if they opened it up. I don't blame them - the FCC could easily put them out of business.
good - tired of 'restricted modules' (Score:1)
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gksudo gedit
Make the lines have this ending:
deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ [ubuntu.com] feisty main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ [ubuntu.com] feisty restricted main universe multiverse
How is this different from the news 9 month ago? (Score:2)
Re:How is this different from the news 9 month ago (Score:1)
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Back in 2006 the assessment was done by talking to a bunch of OpenBSD developers, who responded "we didn't do anything bad". So the SFLC *believed* it should be safe to work with the OpenHAL.
The recent assessment included a source code review, which basically changes the "SFLC believes it's safe" to "SFLC knows it's safe". And that obviously is worth a news item here, don't you think so?
Bye, Mike