From owner-freebsd-stable Thu May 3 3: 7:26 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from clientmail.realtime.co.uk (simian.realtime.co.uk [194.205.134.131]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0CAD237B423; Thu, 3 May 2001 03:07:21 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from waynep@zaphod.realtime.co.uk) Received: from zaphod.realtime.co.uk ([194.205.134.208]) by clientmail.realtime.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 14vG0m-0007Q8-01; Thu, 03 May 2001 11:07:04 +0100 Received: from waynep by zaphod.realtime.co.uk with local (Exim 3.20 #1) id 14vG0i-000L6I-00; Thu, 03 May 2001 11:07:00 +0100 From: Wayne Pascoe To: Claude Buisson Cc: , Subject: Re: FYI: GPL Linux driver for Alcatel ADSL SpeedTouch USB References: Reply-To: wayne.pascoe@realtime.co.uk Date: 03 May 2001 11:07:00 +0100 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Lines: 30 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.1 (Cuyahoga Valley) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Claude Buisson writes: > Hello, > > As I have not seen this info on a FreeBSD list, I think it could be > useful to know that there exists an Open Source (GPL) Linux driver > for the Alcatel ADSL SpeedTouch USB modem being developed outside Alcatel > (no kernel patch nor special library needed). Actually, your information is incorrect on several fronts. For starters only a portion of the driver is open source under the GPL licence. The majority ( and most of the important bits) are in a closed source module. This driver also (from what I've read so far) only works under the 2.4 kernel series. This is not an open sourced driver and the myth that it is, should not be perpetuated. If it were true open source, there would be a driver for FreeBSD by now, because we would have had a starting point. Companies that release these kinds of drivers for GNU/Linux and then claim to be heroes of the revolution just annoy me. At least Alcatel didn't brag about it. They just did it to get people off their back :) -- - Wayne Pascoe E-mail: wayne.pascoe@realtime.co.uk Phone : +44 (0) 20 7544 4668 Mobile: +44 (0) 788 431 1675 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message