Linux Driver Project Gets A Shot In The Arm From Novell
October 2, 2007 - 8:02 am - Posted by iDunzo
Linux’s biggest downside remains the lack of driver support for peripheral devices of all stripes, but there’s good news: a new project from Novell is offering to write free drivers for any manufacturer that’s willing to show their specs.
The project itself is not new, it was announced last year by the main developer, Greg Kroah-Hartman, a programmer at Novell.
However, late last week Kroah-Hartman posted an update to his blog and announced that Novell has moved him onto the project full-time.
I never imagined that so many different people would offer to help out. There is a real need for a place where developers can find a “real” project to work on in the Linux kernel.
The Kernel Janitors project is a great place to start out, but what to do from there? It turns out that over 100 different developers offered up their services.
Clearly this was a huge untapped group of talented people who wanted to help out.
This is great news for Linux fans and will hopefully mean much better device support for your favorite distribution.
Something to note, while Kroah-Hartman and crew are willing to sign NDAs for the actual device details the companies hand over, all of the code generated will be GPLv2 and can thus be rolled into the Linux kernel.
There’s an announcement on the Linux Driver mailing list with more details, or you can check out the Linux Driver Project website for more information.
Via: Linux Watch
