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The only thing worse than having to maintain drivers for your product, is having to maintain drivers for your competitor's product!

• 5ilv3r 10y ago
  Isn't that how ad-hoc standards are brought into existence?
• infodroid 10y ago
  Tell that to Broadcom, Intel, Marvell, Qualcomm Atheros, and Realtek. All of them released open source Linux drivers for their wireless network products and they're still doing good business. So I don't buy this line of argument.
  • MikusR 10y ago
    Most of those drivers are shims for huge binary blobs.
    • infodroid 10y ago
      That might be true, but the general point is that most drivers in the Linux kernel don't need blobs, and they are in many cases written by manufacturers of the hardware. Competing manufacturers have not suffered as a result of releasing free Linux drivers, and arguably are profiting from it.
    • mangix 10y ago
      They aren't. There's firmware in there but it's usually not very big. Look up softmac vs. fullmac