Contributed by dhartmei on from the blob-busters dept.
Jonathan Gray and Damien Bergamini recently worked together to develop the nfe driver to support NVIDIA Ethernet controllers. In this interview, they talk about OpenBSD's policy to not ship binary-blobs, explaining the problems associated with drivers that use these blobs and the affect these types of drivers have on the open source community. They also detail the efforts involved in writing the nfe driver, describing why they started the project, how they were able to support undocumented hardware, and the features supported by the new driver.
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By Anonymous Coward (156.34.213.240) on
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By Anonymous Coward (66.11.66.41) on
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By Shane J Pearson (202.45.125.5) on
Ssh! Don't alert them to their own stupidity! They might come here to escape it! Or worse still, the lists.
If we don't say any more, they might hopefully stay at /. and in IRC.
By Anonymous Coward (156.34.217.43) on
Perhaps smaller companies that want to break in to the video card market will be more accomodating ... assuming such companies exist. OpenBSD otherwise has little hope of ever having 3d acceleration (even 'theoretical' 3d acceleration based on binary blobs which most of us wouldn't touch on bet!).
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By Anonymous Coward (70.27.15.123) on
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By Anonymous Coward (156.34.217.43) on
By Anonymous Coward (128.171.90.200) on
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By Matthias Kilian (84.134.0.115) on
By Anonymous Coward (128.171.90.200) on
Of course if you are using lynx, you probably have no idea what I am talking about.
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By Anonymous Coward (68.100.130.21) on
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By tedu (69.12.168.114) on
read jsg, push home, read damien.
> and I can't read two separate paragraphs at once, so I don't see what
> the point was.
the question was only printed once, saving electrons.
By Damon McMahon (58.104.119.82) damon.mcmahon@gmail.com on
Both authors gave concise and articulate reasoning for why driver blobs are bad news for everyone who even pretends to give a damn about the security, stability and long-term viability of their hardware platform of choice.
As others have noted, it was in stark contrast to some of the supposed linux fan-boys on the recent slashdot article who have no problems running blobs if it means they get to run the latest and greatest hardware. This attitude is so glaringly lacking in any backbone or principle, they are an embarassment to their open-source "community" and should feel ashamed.
It's also good to see another Aussie developer making valuable contributions to the OpenBSD code base, go Jonathan!!
By Venture37 (217.22.88.123) venture37 # hotmail com on www.geeklan.co.uk