A Call To "Kill All Proprietary Drivers For Good"

Phoronix ^ | March 29th | Michael Larabel

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

UPDATE: I have been contacted by Qualcomm PR regarding this expected presentation next week. The content of the Qualcomm Atheros developers was not approved by Qualcomm's legal department and the views to be expressed will be of their own personal beliefs.

Next week at the 6th annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Francisco, two Qualcomm Atheros engineers will be speaking about their Linux device driver development experiences and will go as far as calling for all proprietary drivers to be killed for good. They talk not just about killing proprietary drivers for Linux, but for all operating systems. Can the plans they lay out to kill all proprietary drivers work or is this just a big pipe-dream?

[Dr. Sivana]

The point of open source drivers is full circumvention of the hardware manufacturer.

I specifically mentioned proprietary, because many of the proprietary manufacturers do not release the specs. A lot of the open source drivers I have seen over the years have either been glitchy, or just did not make full use of the hardware's features. It's not the open source communities fault, trying to reverse engineer a software modem or a non-TWAIN compliant scanner with special features is more than a little challenging. I'm glad that AMD is opening specs for their video cards, but I cannot wait 1-2 years or never for someone to write a driver for a new version of an OS. I had to retire a Canon fax/laser printer and a Visioneer Strobe Pro Scanner when I went to the 64 bit version of Windows 7 from 32 bit XP. Canon made a high end $15,000 copier that they refused to make 64 bit drivers for, and either complete specs aren't properly codified, or it is not worth anybody's while to make the drivers. I know this group's plans is to change that. My belief is that the hardware vendors aren't willing to do their part (release full specs, much less consistently conform to emerging standards) and that the well-meaning open source community won't be able to generate good drivers in a timely manner.

[B Knotts]

I think it’s the old planned obsolescence thing. That’s what proprietary software vendors have the ability to do.

And it’s why I avoid them whenever it’s practical.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

-—————My belief is that the hardware vendors aren’t willing to do their part (release full specs, much less consistently conform to emerging standards) and that the well-meaning open source community won’t be able to generate good drivers in a timely manner.——————

Makes sense. I do think this call will largely fall on deaf ears for now. But the call will be made again. And again. Coming from a set of Qualcomm people is a lot different than seeing it come from some whack nut like Stallman.

With many companies already doing it(you mentioned printers, you should buy HP, they support open source too http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/index.html ) at some point the call gets loud enough while at the same time those still coveting their proprietary drivers becomes a smaller and smaller crowd, and eventually the egg breaks.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

As to your high end printer and scanner, if you still have your XP install disks, install it in a virtual box.

https://www.virtualbox.org/

Yes, virtual box is open source too. :-) When necessary, bring your files into your XP environment and hit print. Voila.

Now that I’ve grown accustomed to virtualization on linux, I don’t know how I ever lived without it.

[Dr. Sivana]

With many companies already doing it(you mentioned printers, you should buy HP, they support open source too

In some cases, I deal with the equipment the company already had. In others, like the Visioneer Strobe Pro, it was the only product at the time that did what I wanted (reasonably priced versatile sheet fed scanning interfacing with Paperport software), in still others it was a matter of the best value (inexpensive laser fax that can also print if necessary. HP's fax machines were all ink jet).

I would be surprised if HP's multi-function printers were completely open source. I try to stay away from those things, but they tend to be software heavy. My own color laser these days is an HP. And, not withstanding my take on the landscape, I like open source just fine. In my current work environment (large state government agency) I see how the software companies play games with licensing agreements, and the client really has little choice but to pay or go to another vendor who will eventually pull the same stunt. The newest trick is to charge PER CORE.

Although Linux and I are just on a last name basis, I did strongly recommend moving from Win Server to Red Hat Linux for the next upgrade of our tape backup software. We'll see.

[2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten]

I’m pretty sure that there exists open source drivers for Nvidia - but it’s an apple to the proprietary orange - again if I have my facts straight. If I’m right the open source one will allow for some functionality of the hardware but to get the cutting edge performance needed for cutting edge applications (read games) - open source just will not cut it.

I don’t see this model changing going forward. If you’re in graphics chip development the whole raison d’etre for your company is to stay on the bleeding edge. And this involves proprietary hardware design. To hint at how the hardware is built by opening up the driver is - well it’s just completely contrary to the whole notion of staying one step ahead of any competition.

People tend to think that there’s a bright line between hardware (chips) and software (driver). There’s not. Whatever you can do in one you can do in the other depending on a number of factors. Just as a graphics chip maker won’t put their (detailed) hardware architecture/implementation in the public domain they won’t put their driver source in the public domain either, for one thing because it provides insight into what the hardware itself is doing and for another thing there may be tricks they are actually doing in software that are equally proprietary.

[TalonDJ]

They have to. Such is the nature of video cards. Different markets different needs.