Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3397 mails)

["Fred A. Miller" <fmiller@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri April 22 2005 11:00 am, Mike McMullin wrote:

[snip]

>   It's easy to pick on M$, but the real problem is that hardware vendors
> do not provide drivers for Linux.  M$ has no control over what OS a

Well, I KNOW that in some cases, at least, M$ has put heavy presure on some 
OEMS to not provide Linux drivers......just like they did in the "OS/2 days."

> particular piece of hardware is used on.  It's in the hardware
> manufacturers best interest to realize that having drivers out for the
> differing OS' is ultimately to their advantage, and open sourcing that
> information even more so.  By the time a competitor can get their clone
> to market, the manufacturer can have newer and better products out
> leaving the non-innovators in the dust, and not have to worry about the
> overhead of writing multiple drivers for multiple OS'.  Open source
> makes darn good (hardware) sense in this case IMO.

I agree with you, and have used that argument with a number of developers 
without success. Maybe there's not enough of us calling them.

Fred

-- 
The only bug free software from MickySoft is still shrink-wrapped
in their warehouse..."