registry team mailing list archive

[»John« <JnS.002@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi there.


> I dont see how you get from portable binary drivers to binary blobs.

If you factor in my understanding of the word "blob" (which for me
equals "binary (only) drivers", not "free drivers in their pre-compiled
form"), then you just answered yourself.


> With my suggestion you would be able to for example use the GPL
drivers from Linux on FreeBSD or Solaris without recompiling them. If we
also would be able to agree on standard for packages and repositories
you would also be able to just install the drivers from a common
repository.

And that's what I agreed would be really cool about this universal
driver interface (among other things).

Anyway, I've been thinking about this a little more and here's the
result:
Got a flash drive, external hard drive, memory card reader, PostScript
printer or a decent webcam embedded to your laptop (just a few examples
from the top of my head)? They all work like a charm right out of the
box (and they probably did long before you first decided to try some
random free OS), right? That's because all these devices adhere to open
standards defining how particular sort of hardware has to behave from
the software perspective - both input and output is well defined. They
must understand certain commands and be able to at least explain their
output to the driver if it's mandatory format isn't already defined
within the standard itself. That way every device in the same hardware
class becomes just a different hardware implementation of the same
concept with SIMPLE GENERIC DRIVERS (one driver to rule them all) and
YOU GET A FLAWLESS OUT OF THE BOX SUPPORT FOR YOUR DEVICE. I think that
what we really need is to put more pressure on hardware manufacturers to
make them move in that direction which combined with your idea would
blast all the hardware support M$ likes to brag about so much into
oblivion.

-- 
Microsoft has a majority market share
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