3 ms·
WiFi is cursed in OSS. FreeBSD always has from 0 to 1 WiFi maintainer. All of them were very talented and productive (Søren Schmidt, Adrian Chadd and Bjoern A.
by blacklion 2y ago
WiFi is cursed in OSS.
FreeBSD always has from 0 to 1 WiFi maintainer. All of them were very talented and productive (Søren Schmidt, Adrian Chadd and Bjoern A. Zeeb among others!), but it is too complex and vast area to work alone. Especially beginning from 802.11n and beyond.
- yencabulator 2y agoMaybe said more directly, Qualcomm is a curse on OSS.
- blacklion 2y agoParts bought with Atheros are still OSS-freindly. What are Qualcomm other WiFi offers? I mean, for PC, not embedded into smartphone chips. Broadcom and Realtek is not better. Intel is not too great too (blobs in firmware, etc).
- yencabulator 2y agoBroadcom might be the worst. Firmware uploaded to a device CPU isn't really a problem as long as the blobs can be distributed, pretending that adding flash to every gadget to store the same blob makes a gadget better is just naive. I for one would prefer stateless peripherals.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y agoI am given to understand that FreeBSD has been pushing on that again: https://www.phoronix.com/news/FreeBSD-On-Laptops-WiFi-802.11g https://www.phoronix.com/news/FreeBSD-On-Laptops-WiFi-802.11...
- blacklion 2y agoYep, I hope this time it will not be stalled in the middle of the process at POC level.
- dbolgheroni 2y agoStefan Sperling does a great work on the OpenBSD side.