From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Apr 13 19:20:12 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id TAA23229 for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 19:20:12 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from smtp04.primenet.com (smtp04.primenet.com [206.165.6.134]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id CAA23164 for ; Tue, 14 Apr 1998 02:19:56 GMT (envelope-from tlambert@usr06.primenet.com) Received: (from daemon@localhost) by smtp04.primenet.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) id TAA08892; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 19:19:56 -0700 (MST) Received: from usr06.primenet.com(206.165.6.206) via SMTP by smtp04.primenet.com, id smtpd008849; Mon Apr 13 19:19:53 1998 Received: (from tlambert@localhost) by usr06.primenet.com (8.8.5/8.8.5) id TAA08189; Mon, 13 Apr 1998 19:19:50 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199804140219.TAA08189@usr06.primenet.com> Subject: Re: Indus Drivers To: julian@whistle.com (Julian Elischer) Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 02:19:50 +0000 (GMT) Cc: brad@bleier.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <3532AAAF.3F54BC7E@whistle.com> from "Julian Elischer" at Apr 13, 98 05:15:43 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > We use a driver for the DATAFIRE card, but we needed to sign > a non disclosure agreement to get the info to do it. So therefore > we can't release the driver! :-( I think we could, technically, release a binary driver for it, just as someone could sign an NDA on the Adaptec HIM code and release a binary driver for Adaptec's RAID controller. The FreeBSD infrastructure is not (currently) conducive to binary drivers from third parties, unfortunately, which clouds things more than a bit. Part of the problem is that there is a need to be able to statically link PIC-compiled objects into the kernel, and there is a need to conceptually, in the build process for the kernel, include binary driver objects without source dependencies being implied. This basically goes back to the fact that "config exists as something more than a list of object files to link together". 8-(. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message