Crossroads

[Harald Welte]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 11:33:44PM +0100, Sebastian Mancke wrote:
 
> Although it has a closed firmware, I found this announcement
> http://maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-developers/2006-April/003575.html
> with no replies on the maemo mailing list. Maybe someone who is faster
> in than than me should try to get the driver working on his nokia770.
> (The packages mentioned in the announcement do not work on current
> maemo, because of the older EABI)

If you are a vendor, trying to build hardware that you have to provide
support for, then the last thing you want to do is to use a chipset with
software that 

1) the software developers don't have hardware docs
2) the chipset manufacturer has no idea about your driver software and
   will not give the device manufacturer any docs either

It's a complete nightmare where nobody can help you and provide any kind
of acceptable support level.  Thus, from a business standpoint, not
bearable.

Also, even if the free driver authors (prism54-softmac in this case)
would really have reversed the chip up to the point there is barely
nothing that they don't know about it,  I still would definitely like to
prefer generating business to a chipset manufacturer who understands the
Linux community and provides GPL'd drivers and/or documentation.

Cheers,

-- 
- Harald Welte <laforge at openmoko.org>          	        http://openmoko.org/
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