* John Andersen (jsamyth@gmail.com) [20080613 04:57]:
It still taints your kernel. (And even Novell has a policy that they won't help you on any bug you run into if your kernel is tainted. Often ignored, this restriction is still there).
And rightly so! If you can reproduce the bug without the tainting module, we will help. If not, ,it's the job of the vendor of the closed source module to fix the bug. We can't fix bugs in modules whose source code we do not have.
So the kernel developers have come half way, making a standardized place for firmware while still denying its usefulness. Nihilism at its best.
Very few deny the usefulness of firmware, but a firmware isn't a kernel driver.
Things are even worse for binary blobs that run on the main CPU. (And rightfully so).
In your eyes maybe, but that view isn't shared by all others.
But instead of designing a safe sandbox for these things to run in, they still say you can't really use them. (Ndiswrapper is a not too safe example of a sandbox).
Why should kernel developers care and invest time for people that only use what the community offers (an additional market) but refuse to give anything back to the comunity? Some argue that ndiswrapper has the same problems as binary-only drivers in regards to Licenses.
Something has to give. The sooner a proper container is developed for these types of software the better.
No, the sooner vendors realize that non-NDA'd documentation and open source drivers are the way to go the better. Philipp -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org