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Wouldn't this be a lot more meaningful if they were committing to get these drivers upstream?
by fivelessminutes 5y ago
Wouldn't this be a lot more meaningful if they were committing to get these drivers upstream?
- pwr-electronics 5y agoIt's similar to their LTspice strategy. It's free, but it's only for ADI devices. They want you to buy their stuff.
- rgetz 5y agoI'm not sure what you mean. All the Linux kernel drivers found on https://github.com/analogdevicesinc/linux https://github.com/analogdevicesinc/linux or upstreamed at kernel.org are released under the standard Linux kernel license - GPL 2.0. There is no "only for ADI devices" possible - doing so would be a violation of section 6 of the GPL 2 ("You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.") Yes - ADI would encourage anyone to buy their devices - but no - we don't force it - There are many things that are "ADI devices only", but that's normally userspace or HDL or tools, not kernel. Disclaimer - I work at ADI.
- pwr-electronics 5y agoI see how you read that completely differently than how I meant it. I apologize, and thank you for pointing that out. I meant to convey that creating a free software tool specifically to support a hardware catalog has precedent, makes business sense, and is useful to customers. Not everything has to conform to the FOSS die-hard ethos to upstream everything.
- Demon000 5y agoMost of the drivers in that list are already upstreamed.
- rgetz 5y agoThe goal is to always upstream every driver (and we do a pretty good job at that). Depending on the lineage of the software (who developed it, what they developed it for) - it may not be possible to meet the kernel coding guidelines - so we don't send those upstream. Disclaimer - I work at ADI.