Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 13:19:35 +1000 From: Peter Jeremy <peter.jeremy@auss2.alcatel.com.au> To: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: More on the Intel-UNIX standard Message-ID: <98Sep21.131912est.40335@border.alcanet.com.au>
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On Sun, 20 Sep 1998 00:26:18 -0500, "Pedro F. Giffuni" <pfgiffun@bachue.usc.unal.edu.co> wrote: >I'm concerned about the SNR in hackers, but I just couldn't resist >asking if someone was aware and acting on this > http://www.sco.com/udi/ This was mentioned by some Intel marketroids at the recent AUUG'98 conference. There was a fair amount of discussion at a subsequent Freenix BOF (which included Greg Lehey and Peter Wemm within the FreeBSD group and Robert Hart from Red Hat, as well as assorted users from the Linux community and all the *BSD groups). The almost unanimous concensus(*) was that it was a very bad move and the Freenix community should resist it. The major problems seen by the group were: 1) Binary-only device drivers are a bad idea. It will reduce the chances of us getting access to the hardware interface specs, and therefore being able to build a device driver that works. 2) Binary-only device drivers tie the hardware to the processor. This reduces the portability of (eg) PCI cards. 3) The difficulty of supporting the kernel services required for a UDI driver. 4) Increased finger-pointing when a device driver fails. Greg and/or Peter might have something further to add. Peter (*) I think I was the only person who felt it had any merit at all. -- Peter Jeremy (VK2PJ) peter.jeremy@alcatel.com.au Alcatel Australia Limited 41 Mandible St Phone: +61 2 9690 5019 ALEXANDRIA NSW 2015 Fax: +61 2 9690 5247 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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