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Broadcom releases an open-source driver for its wireless chipsets

lwn.net

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Re: Broadcom releases an open-source driver for its wireless chipsets

#3

Post by Zak »

I don't understand why more commodity hardware companies aren't doing this. Drivers are an actual competitive advantage with 3D video cards and possibly a few other things, but I can't see it for wireless chipsets. It seems to me that making the drivers open source might actually reduce costs, with no real down sides.

Re: Broadcom releases an open-source driver for its wireless chipsets

#4

Post by yason »

Zak wrote: post #3

I don't understand why more commodity hardware companies aren't doing this. Drivers are an actual competitive advantage with 3D video cards and possibly a few other things, but I can't see it for wireless chipsets. It seems to me that making the drivers open source might actually reduce costs, with no real down sides.

3D video cards are a commodity, too, these days. Even they could offer open-source reference drivers that allow for full basic utilization of the hardware, albeit at suboptimal performance. The heavily-optimized trade secret like cool codepaths could be offered in binary drivers for those who want the last drop of perf.

Re: Broadcom releases an open-source driver for its wireless chipsets

#5

Post by Zak »

yason wrote: post #4
Zak wrote: post #3

I don't understand why more commodity hardware companies aren't doing this. Drivers are an actual competitive advantage with 3D video cards and possibly a few other things, but I can't see it for wireless chipsets. It seems to me that making the drivers open source might actually reduce costs, with no real down sides.

3D video cards are a commodity, too, these days. Even they could offer open-source reference drivers that allow for full basic utilization of the hardware, albeit at suboptimal performance. The heavily-optimized trade secret like cool codepaths could be offered in binary drivers for those who want the last drop of perf.

As I understand it, ATI is almost doing that by providing information to authors of open-source drivers.

Re: Broadcom releases an open-source driver for its wireless chipsets

#8

Post by sparky »

konad wrote: post #7

Great and all but "Linux drivers are not documentation"! All of FOSS is not Linux.

I agree with you, but if I had to choose between a functional Linux driver and documentation, even as someone running BSD, I would take the Linux driver every time. A functional driver with source lends some confidence that nothing is missing. Documentation can be well-intentioned, but it is rarely so complete that you could write a major piece of software with nothing else.

Of course, drivers+documentation would be even better :)

Re: Broadcom releases an open-source driver for its wireless chipsets

#9

Post by JoeAltmaier »

I struggled with vendor drivers for chipsets for years (yes this company too). They are generally awful. Most are warmed-over demo drivers from the original silicon vendor, intended to exercise chip features but no diligence to adhere to specs, protocols, handle (any) error conditions, be readable or supportable.

Vendor "support" for their driver means a third-string intern/student who hashes together patches that reveal profound ignorance of the architecture.

Its not just NIH; the chain of custody from silicon designer to you just doesn't include ANYBODY who has your interests/your customer's interests in mind. They are more concerned with making the driver portable across their product line, doing it cheaply, getting it to market at the same time their hardware releases etc.

Any robustness/architecture/responsible software processes have to be your business and yours alone. This probably means rewriting the whole driver, using the demo driver for reference but ONLY for chip-specific info.

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