The Linux model definitely encourages mainline collaboration. It just happens that the Android vendors are fighing against this encouragement, and Google has ca

The Linux model definitely encourages mainline collaboration. It just happens that the Android vendors are fighing against this encouragement, and Google has caved in to their demands. > Compared to what? Compared to what happens on Windows and Android, where individual drivers have to reimplement common functionality, often in inconsistent ways. > Which no user has ever cared about. Users care that their drivers work and that they continue to be supported in the future. Less compact code is larger, and therefore buggier. Drivers which are provided as proprietary userspace blobs are invariably unmaintained and stop working with future kernel versions.