I agree that there is room for disagreement between the two approaches. However, I don't think that AMD did things this way just because of short-sighted manage

I agree that there is room for disagreement between the two approaches. However, I don't think that AMD did things this way just because of short-sighted management. A HAL-like layer is a solution that I've seen or heard of in a lot of places, from a lot of hardware manufacturers that want to support Linux. It may seem -- and may well be -- a sub-optimal solution, but it's not worse than what we have now, and AMD looks willing to commit to the long-term support of the HAL and the drivers. This is likely something that they want to do not just because they're lazy and would rather spend the money on something else -- it's likely that their management genuinely sees the development and maintenance of an entirely unabstracted set of drivers for Linux as inefficient, especially when you look at how much money they make out of it. And they aren't entirely wrong. Deucher's remark about the Red Hat silo may look malicious and abrasive, but it has a glimpse of truth. I could make a really cool photo album by taking snapshots of developers and managers who are only familiar with Windows and hear about the challenges involved in writing (and upstreaming) a non-trivial Linux driver. I'm not saying that the driver should have been merged as it is just because there's no alternative. I do think, however, that it's a little presumptuous to think its architecture is the way it is just because managers are stupid. Maybe a third option, that's not HAL but also addresses the concerns and requirements of AMD exists.