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BSD Operating Systems

FreeBSD 6.0 to Target Wireless Devices 215

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the and-now-for-the-wireless-toaster dept.
BSDForums writes "FreeBSD is hoping to move beyond the server and desktop market by providing expanded wireless support. FreeBSD developer Scott Long said that 'one of the primary reasons for improving wireless support is to give companies the tools to put FreeBSD into their wireless devices. The guy at FreeBSD who is adding wireless support is under contract from wireless companies to do the work.'"
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FreeBSD 6.0 to Target Wireless Devices More

FreeBSD 6.0 to Target Wireless Devices

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  • The reluctant adoption of Linux (Score:5, Insightful)

    by HishamMuhammad ( 553916 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @04:34PM (#13363352) Homepage Journal
    This is an interesting development. Companies have been using Linux in their wireless boxes due to the lack of any viable alternative. Due to the GPL, these companies were forced to publish their changes to the kernel, which has allowed the number of cool hacks we've been seing. Clearly, those companies would rather keep their changes proprietary, so BSD based systems are much more attractive to them. While it's nice to see improved hardware support to another free operating system, this might bring adverse consequences in the long run. We'll see...
    • In other words, the use of the Linux kernel allows free software users can pressure these would-be proprietors into helping them maintain our software freedom for derivative works so long as one leverages their laziness. That is, as long as one doesn't distribute proprietary kernel modifications.

      Given FreeBSD's willingness to include proprietary software (see discussions between FreeBSD and OpenBSD developers and advocates surrounding technical specifications for cards -- FreeBSD is happy to include whatev

      • Re:Why lose a stepping stone to freedom preservati (Score:4, Insightful)

        by larkost ( 79011 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @07:09PM (#13363906)
        Umm... I think you got the point reversed. The poster was talking about the fact that you can take BSD licensed code, make changes to it to support your product, and not be forced to give your work to anyone else (for example your competition).

        While we all understand the idea behind the GPL, many businesses will simply not even consider using OS's based on it because of the forced nature of it. FreeBSD stands to get a lot of users because of this in the embedded space.

        Now, the gamble with the BSD license is that people might use the code without ever contributing back. But the bet is that the big companies will give some sort of kickback to the projects, even if it is not the complete solution.

        An example of this is practice would be Apple and KHTML. While Apple has not completely given everything it could have given, the KHTML project has benefited from Apple using a derivative of KHTML. We can argue about whether it is enough, but it is benefit that Apple would not have contributed if KHTML were GPL rather than BSD. Management would not have touched it with a 10 foot pole.

        • Re:Why lose a stepping stone to freedom preservati (Score:4, Informative)

          by HishamMuhammad ( 553916 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @07:32PM (#13363986) Homepage Journal
          Actually, KHTML is LGPL.

          I agree with your comment, but you mention that the bet is that companies will foster further development of the projects even if they're not forced to provide code back [I'd quote but I'm posting this from links]. I have my doubts.
          • You may have your doubts but history simply proves that they do (not all of them, but quite a few still)

            FreeBSD has a thing called netgraph, from its manpage:

            HISTORY
                      The netgraph system was designed and first implemented at Whistle Commu-
                      nications, Inc. in a version of FreeBSD 2.2 customized for the Whistle
                      InterJet.

            Then, from man jail:

            AUTHORS
                      The jail feature was written by Poul-Henning Kamp for R&D Associates
                      http://www.rndassociates.com/ [rndassociates.com] who contributed it to FreeBSD.

            Of course PHK is a core member of the fbsd team, but that doesn't change that it was written and payed for by a commercial user of the system and then contributed to it.

            There is a simple very good reason for companies to contribute their changes, given that they get accepted:

            It saves them the cost on maintaining such a component and keeping up with the development of the system.
        • I didn't get anything backwards, but you misstated the reason the new BSD license (and similar non-copylefted free software licenses like the MIT X11 license) are considered to be a "gamble".

          Private derivatives are derivative works which are not distributed; changes are made and not sent back upstream. Private derivatives allow people to help themselves by improving their programs or getting someone to do it for them. Not everyone is in a situation where they can effectively send back changes (people who

    • Re:The reluctant adoption of Linux (Score:5, Interesting)

      by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @05:25PM (#13363546) Homepage
      That's bull really. I can do the GPL zealotry bit like the best of them, but most of the cool hacks with wireless devices do not come as a result of kernel changes released by companies. Most of them come from the fact that these devices simply are small, cheap systems that are able to run linux.

      • Re:The reluctant adoption of Linux (Score:4, Insightful)

        by HishamMuhammad ( 553916 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @10:34PM (#13364632) Homepage Journal
        Well, all those Linksys hacks are based on the tarballs originally released by Linksys in their process of complying to the GPL.

        While it's not impossible to do it without vendor support (XBox Linux, etc), the cool hacks are greatly helped by packages released by vendors.

        Hopefully, as companies see the benefits that ensue from this relation, they develop a different attitude towards Linux (Sony wrt Linux on the PlayStations is a good example -- here's hoping their announcements for Linux on the PS3 will materialize (but I'm not holding my breath)).

    • Proprietary source is not the reason.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by willy_me ( 212994 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @07:55PM (#13364100)
      Well, it might be for some, but I think that most companies would be fine with publishing any minor kernel modifications made to Linux. The real reason why companies are a little afraid of the GPL is that there is always the potential for lawsuits. Granted, it's a remote possibility, but a possibility all the same; most companies would rather not be bothered with the GPL if given a choice.

      And this is where FreeBSD can give people a choice. And assuming it's just as good as Linux, it's a better choice due to legal issues.

      One last thing about the GPL is that most companies don't see distributing changes as a free endeavor. Someone has to be in charge of overseeing the process - and labour isn't free. In addition, distributing the changes requires other resources (like bandwidth) which, while not very expensive, just add to the complexity of using Linux. While this might be a minor issue, it's still an issue that companies would rather avoid.

      And what happens when the slashdot community burns a company for forgetting to post something, or posting modifications that are difficult to utilize. Remember Apple and Konqueror?

      Oh well, but to respond to your last point, I don't think there will be many adverse consequences. The work currently being paid for by these companies is under the BSD license and I don't see them being that protective of the kernel. The GUI however is another story.

      Willy

      • Re:Proprietary source is not the reason.. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by LuSiDe ( 755770 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @01:32AM (#13365179)
        The real reason why companies are a little afraid of the GPL is that there is always the potential for lawsuits.


        Granted, it's a remote possibility, but a possibility all the same

        And this is where FreeBSD can give people a choice.
        First of all: why are those 'remote', legal possibilities not existant in FreeBSD? SCO? There's almost nobody who believes they have a case anymore and they also said some things about *BSD. So... what else? We're discussing drivers. If i write a driver for the Linux kernel and i release that sourcecode under the GPL then why would that make me somehow more vulnerable to a lawsuit than a BSD licensed driver for FreeBSD? Or if i write a proprietary driver? Nah, the significant advantage is the option to write a proprietary driver for FreeBSD. However that is also possible for the Linux kernel and the Linux kernel is more popular (esp for embedded purposes i think -- i have no statistics or ath just observation from linuxembedded.com whereas not seen much FreeBSD-based embedded hardware).

        most companies would rather not be bothered with the GPL if given a choice.
        Debatable. Given there are many corporations which deal with the GPL. The hazard is also debatable.

        And what happens when the slashdot community burns a company for forgetting to post something, or posting modifications that are difficult to utilize. Remember Apple and Konqueror?
        I guess Apple prefers the BSD license though, yeah. One example doesn't make it a yes/no though and then again Apple doesn't contribute much open source software either. Its not in their interest (therefore i argue: Why would i care that Apple gets free goodies? They are being egoistic. Why should i be altruistic to them then?). But, different corporations have different interests. RedHat, for example, has a different view and i know various corporations which support the Linux kernel via a GPLed driver. ATI and NVidia do support a driver for Linux (and NVidia FreeBSD as well) but its not under the GPL. Its not in their interest to do so. But did they ever state they dislike the GPL or dealing with it? Did NVidia state they prefer to deal with the BSD license? Or FreeBSD? Over GPL or the Linux kernel?

        And assuming it's just as good as Linux, it's a better choice due to legal issues.
        The former is debatable. Regarding the latter: What legal issues does Linux have which FreeBSD doesn't have? The only one currectly known -excluding SCO- is the BSD license itself which means in this case that the corporation would not have to give their sourcecode changes back even when they'd distribute the binary. Wether thats a good or a bad thing -- debatable.

        IOW, to end my post: I agree w/you on choice, i agree that there are circumstances where you're right if not only for the fact that there are so many corporative possiblities in this world. But to say the BSD license is always in advantage on a legal point of view while ignoring its protective powers, is too non-pragmatic to me.

        • Re:Proprietary source is not the reason.. (Score:5, Informative)

          by daeley ( 126313 ) on Sunday August 21, 2005 @01:42PM (#13366927) Homepage
          First of all: why are those 'remote', legal possibilities not existant in FreeBSD?

          Because BSD has already been through a clarifying legal process, one that Linux has yet to go through -- or rather it's in the middle of a big honkin' legal process right now. See for more info 4.4BSD and descendants [wikipedia.org] in the BSD article on wikipedia. You are correct that one prime BSD advantage is the lack of GPL lock-in, but it is not the only advantage in the current Linux legal climate -- no matter what the validity of SCO claims, as we all know the FUD is the point.

    • Which Linux? (Score:3, Informative)

      by konmaskisin ( 213498 )
      It's a lot easier to develop for FreeBSD since it has one consistent version controlled set of user space and kernel code with timed regular releases.

      It is stable and companies don't have to worry as much about keeping their own specially forked version to support their device,

      • Re:Which Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by misleb ( 129952 )
        But they (embedded develoeprs) will fork it because that is how they get it to do what they want. That is the whole point of this article. Proprietary developers WILL fork the code and the advantage BSD offers is that they don't have to release their fork back to the public. It is about licensing, not which one is more "stable."

        -matthew
    • ``Companies have been using Linux in their wireless boxes due to the lack of any viable alternative. Due to the GPL, these companies were forced to publish their changes to the kernel''

      Why would one of the BSDs not be a viable alternative? If having to release changes is really a serious concern, that seems much more logical. I can't imagine tailoring, say, NetBSD to some device would be a lot harder than tailoring Linux to it. So what do you know that I don't?
    • "Clearly, those companies would rather keep their changes proprietary,"

      Your "Clearly" is anything but. I've worked with developing embedded systems based on FreeBSD. Roughly 90% of our changes were appropriate for giving back to the community and were given back to the community.

      Keeping changes proprietary is a tradeoff - it forms a small barrier-to-entry, and impose maintenance costs compared to having them integrated. For most changes, the maintenance costs are higher than the value of lifting the

  • this is really big (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 20, 2005 @04:36PM (#13363364)
    as someone who works for a company that uses many variants of linux in their products, i can tell you that most companies dont have a clue about the GPL and the parts about giving away _their_ code comes as a shock to them.

    i see more and more companies turn to BSD licensed stuff, such as the *BSD OSes

    (no linux vs BSD flame, please)

    • Re:this is really big (Score:4, Insightful)

      by twiddlingbits ( 707452 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @05:27PM (#13363549)
      Some one should be firing the S/W Manager and their corporate attorneys for getting into that mess without looking. ANY License for something you plan to redistribute bears close scrutiny from expert technical and legal resources. Even if it was a small company, for a few 100's of dollars they could have had a lawyer tell them what they were obligated to under the GPL.

  • Code GIveaway (Score:2, Interesting)

    by SniperClops ( 776236 )
    I see a number of companies switching to BSD so they don't have to give away their code like they do with the GPL

    • Re:Code GIveaway (Score:4, Informative)

      by The Vulture ( 248871 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @06:14PM (#13363714) Homepage
      I posted something to this effect on the original CNet article

      I work in embedded development myself (previously video game consoles, then DOCSIS cable modems, now video equipment), so I've seen the shift from expensive proprietary systems (like vxWorks) to free (as in money) systems like Linux.

      The proprietary systems typically have high up-front costs, along with a per-unit royalty, which inflates the cost of the devices. Linux allows for cheaper devices (whether or not the savings are passed to the customer remains to be seen), at a cost (complying with the GPL). This can be somewhat mitigated by making modules that are not licensed under the GPL.

      BSD entering the space will provide some good competition for Linux. Whether newer designs switch to BSD will depend on the chipmakers (like Broadcom), as they are the people who usually write the drivers. Most devices nowadays are just the reference design hardware tweaked a bit with the reference software. So, whatever OS is used for the reference designs is what will be the dominant OS in the embedded space.

      Only time will tell, but if FreeBSD can pull this off, they'll definitely gain some traction.

      -- Joe
  • that wireless is dying now?

  • And I'm sure... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @05:28PM (#13363555)
    The guy at FreeBSD who is adding wireless support is under contract from wireless companies to do the work.

    And I'm sure that someone will think that this just isn't pure. Like the Olympics, which was once ruled that only self-supporting people who could do it for "The Love of the Sport" were worthy.

    Personally this is a great move for OSS, and a vote of confidence in the value of freely available Unixs by the companies. I hope it becomes a model for each part of the industry to do more to support their devices (graphic cards, USB plug in devices, you name it) to the free and OSS communities!

    I will be disappointed if there is a single negative comment about this aspect of how the work is being funded and getting done!

    • Well, most of Linux work is done by people paid to do the work. I don't think anyone sensible thinks that Free Software should only be done "Only for the Love of it".

      However, FreeBSD people seem to have taken a slippery slope on other issues here. To gain wireless support, they have allowed Unmodifiable binary code [freebsd.org] into FreeBSD!

      *BSD camp has long taken the position that BSD is more free than GPL Licenced code. Now it seems that BSD camp is accepting unmodifiable binary-only code as part of FreeBSD, as long

      • Re:And I'm sure... (Score:4, Funny)

        by LurkerXXX ( 667952 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @07:47PM (#13364062)
        All BSD users do not fall in some "*BSD camp" that likes that. Please propose adding some unmodifiable binary-only code into OpenBSD and see what kind of reception you get. It won't be pretty.

        • Re:And I'm sure... (Score:2, Insightful)

          by timmarhy ( 659436 )
          thats because theo as a personality disorder. saying "oh no we can't include closed binaries they are evil" is stupid. people/companies have the right to release their software under any license they want to, and it's insane to think people will choose a lesser product because it has a closed license, they will choose it because it has teh features and price they want. freebsd including those closed drivers doesn't make it any less free, it just means you don't have to go fishing for it when you purchase th

          • Re:And I'm sure... (Score:3, Insightful)

            by LurkerXXX ( 667952 )
            people/companies have the right to release their software under any license they want to

            And who said they didn't? Theo and the OpenBSD guys also have every right to not include binary-only software in their OS if they don't want to.

            at the end of the day bsd is grateful just to have damn drivers for it.

            Make that FreeBSD is grateful just to have the damn drivers. You don't speek for all *BSD varient users.

          • Re:And I'm sure... (Score:3, Insightful)

            by Nimrangul ( 599578 )
            Then you must think it insane for an operating system's developers to want full control over their own operating system, yes? Cause that's what Theo is after.

            Just because a company wants to release unusable binary crud does not mean that OpenBSD needs to use them.

            At the end of the day, OpenBSD ends up a more stable and useable system because the developers can actually fix problems in their system - what can FreeBSD developers do when their is a problem with a binary CLI they have no access to?

            There are

            • Re:And I'm sure... (Score:3, Informative)

              by Fweeky ( 41046 )
              WTF are you wibbling about? Where's all the closed source binary-only stuff in my copies of /usr/src? Where's this garbage you speak of?

              Unless you qualify your statements, you're just spreading FUD.

              • Re:And I'm sure... (Score:3, Informative)

                by Nimrangul ( 599578 )
                The particular closed source cruft I refer to is an Adaptec CLI written in part by Scott Long of FreeBSD, the CLI was written to work with the AAC adaptec cards. This CLI is the only way to manage the card's RAID functionality.

                OpenBSD were planning a RAID system called bioctl, they wanted to fix up various cards which were particularly poor-running by writing complete drivers and having the functionality for them all be run through bioctl, much like ifconfig does with all network cards.

                For months Theo

                • Ah, yes. We have (sadly) plenty of experience with these cards; the remaining two we're using are earmarked for removal from our database cluster in favour of software RAID.

                  However, given that aaccli isn't distributed by FreeBSD, and is in fact a Linux binary only supported through emulation, suggesting that this is something FreeBSD/Scott gleefully accepts seems a bit unfair. At least the driver itself is pretty good; certainly better than the Linux one, ugh.

                  The Atheros wireless HAL situation seems force

                  • Re:And I'm sure... (Score:3, Insightful)

                    by Nimrangul ( 599578 )
                    Well, the HAL has been re-engineered already, OpenBSD chose to learn from the FreeBSD driver/HAL implementation's interaction and wrote an open source alternative to the HAL which may eventually be merged in with the driver, thus becoming whole on OpenBSD systems at least.

                    And the HAL has nothing to do with the FCC, that's the firmware on the card that deals with FCC regulated channels and frequencies. This is about paranoia and intellectual property.

                    These are the kinds of things that should be added into

                    • Re:And I'm sure... (Score:3, Interesting)

                      by Fweeky ( 41046 )
                      Where's the lack of control? I don't like Adaptec's attitude with regard to aaccli, but that's their choice; I have the choice not to buy any more of their shitty RAID controllers. Ditto with WiFi cards; I have control over whether I'm happy to have my hardware work even though the software may be closed because those that make it are forced to make it so by dicks, or I can get something good.

                      Delivering "ultimatums" which everyone knows are going to be ignored just alienates people, users, developers and
                    • The lack of control is in the fact that developers cannot control some binary blob cause they're not given the source for it - there is no way in hell to know what's in there, there could be built in rootkits for all you know, or there could just be a bug that causes kernel panics and the company may never fix.

                      OpenBSD's choice was a good one, it removes something that isn't properly supported from the list of supposedly supported hardware.

                      And why would anyone want to carry this poorly made, buggy binary

                    • FreeBSD gives up control over portions of it's system in return for some limited additonal functionality.

                      They accept certain optional components as a binary. That is nowhere near giving up control over their system, none of those components are reqzured parts of the system, rather, they are things that help make the system more convenient for users.

                      Theo cares about freedom, sure, but he also really only cares about the things he happens to need himself.

                      I happen to have been involved in the Open Graphics pro [opengraphics.org]
                    • Of course Theo only cares about things that are for him. Look through the mailing list and you'll see it a hundred times being said that OpenBSD is made for the developers, anyone else can fuck off or contribute and leave the talk out. The motto of, "shut up and hack," isn't there without cause.

                      Not true about SMP, it was done because a German company wanted it in OpenBSD. They hired a developer to add it to i386 and because it wasn't just some random guy saying, "why isn't there SMP?" But instead some

                    • Not true about SMP, it was done because a German company wanted it in OpenBSD. They hired a developer to add it to i386 and because it wasn't just some random guy saying, "why isn't there SMP?" But instead someone actually there with code, it was accepted into the system.

                      Ok, thanks for the correction there.

                      It does not change at all my point however that when I am looking for a system to use for a specific situation (as opposed to a system to tinker with and maybe develop for) I will use one that actually sh
                    • Unless of course, what you want and what the developers want are the same. I want a free, secure general purpose unix OS. So do the openbsd developers. So I guess it makes it a pretty good choice for me, in fact its the only OS that fits my needs.
                    • Unless of course, what you want and what the developers want are the same.

                      Definitely, but who is to say that what they want tomorrow and what you need tomorrow is going to be the same? If the developers care about their own needs only then you may just be out of luck there.

                      I want a free, secure general purpose unix OS. So do the openbsd developers.

                      Free? (both in cost and in freedom), they do very well in that.

                      Secure? They definitely do well in that as well.

                      General purpose? hrm, if you can live with limited
                    • If I have a need not filled by openbsd, I will use something else for that need. Why isn't this obvious to you? I don't have to use the same OS for everything you know. I use windows for playing games after all.

                      And since when did 3d modelling become general purpose? No, openbsd doesn't have any hardware 3d support. No, it has nothing to do with openbsd and everything to do with nvidia and ati sucking ball sacks. Yeah, its a shame, but what can you do?

                      I'm afraid you have no idea what you are talking ab
                    • And since when did 3d modelling become general purpose?

                      The same argument can be made about a lot of the security features of OpenBSD. They are cool, but have nothing to do with general purpose computing.

                      No, openbsd doesn't have any hardware 3d support. No, it has nothing to do with openbsd and everything to do with nvidia and ati sucking ball sacks. Yeah, its a shame, but what can you do?

                      How about the ATI Radeon 9000, 9200, 9400 ? those are supported with Free and Open Source drivers, lacking support for th
                    • You are making it very clear that you don't know what you are talking about, that's not my fault. You seem to think that having a secure OS makes it no longer general purpose. This is simply wrong. I use openbsd for my laptop, for webservers, mail servers, database, ldap, routing, vpns, firewalls, nfs, snmp monitoring server, and undoubtably a few other things I am forgetting. Seems pretty general purpose to me. None of its security features make it less suitable for general purpose computing.

                      And you a
                    • Well, your calling people stupid because they have another opinion then you is rather telling, and you are still ignoring that 1. SELinux provides quite a good deal of security, and there are definitely free Linux versions.

                      You do dismiss every other alternative or did not look.

                      Also, you make the assumpütion OpenBSD is the only secure OS out there, it is the most secure one maybe, but not the only one that is secure enough.

                      And yes, OpenBSDs security does get in the way, maybe not for you, but that is be
                    • Perhaps you just need to try hooked on phonics, and you will be able to make sense of english. I didn't call you stupid, I said you made stupid assumptions, and you did.

                      SELinux does not provide security, it provides access controls. And debian is the only linux distro I know of that makes any serious attempt at keeping license issues in check, but they don't care about security.

                      I know of other secure OSs, but remember it has to meet all the requirements, "free" and "unix" are both required too.

                      And finally
                    • You just seem to not like OpenBSD's style, the way it's all flossing and flying all over this bitch.

                      You almost got it right.

                      I do not like the notion among certain OpenBSD people that there is no alternative for OpenBSD and that they are the only secure and free unix like system around.

                      I do use it where appropriate, and I like what it offers.
                    • SELinux does not provide security, it provides access controls.

                      Which happens to be a rather relevant thing for providing a secure operating environment, just like auditing.

                      Security concerns a lot more then limiting the possible damage from a compromise (and I do not underestimate the importance of that one, but it is just a component, happens to be one that OpenBSD has a lot of focus on)

                      And debian is the only linux distro I know of that makes any serious attempt at keeping license issues in check, but they
                    • I understand all that.

                      The point was that even in OpenBSD there are compromises made to freedom for practical reasons (the alternative is no support for most cards). In the same way and for the same reasons they have to make certain compromises to security in order to achieve functionality (at all actually, nitpicking would be to say that any functionality is a compromise to security to begin with)

                      That is perfectly fine, and I do see that the people behind it feel strongly about that freedom regardless of th
                    • lasr sentence should of course read 'compromises to security and freedom'
                    • I am pretty sure you could just run a pair of instances of apache and that would solve your problem.

                      Indeed.

                      As long as they can run on different IPs thats an option. If they have to run on a single IP and its not acceptable to run one at a different port, you could use a 3rd apache server listening on the actual IP and use mod_proxy, have the apache servers for the different sitex listen on some ports on localhost etc. Gets quite messy after a while. Alternatively one could run Apache 2 and cgid or such, but
                    • I'd not call redistributing firmware a comprimise, since there are legal responsibilities that the company producing wireless hardware must be dutiful of.

                      Yes, and so does for example NVIDIA, it just happens to be SGI and some others that they have a responsibility to instead of for example the FCC.

                      It is the choice of the makers of those wireless companies to not include the firmware on for example a flash eprom as to save a few bucks so its not like they have no way to prevent this thing to begin with witho

              • Re:And I'm sure... (Score:2, Informative)

                by KutuluWare ( 791333 )
                I can't speak for *your* copy of /usr/src, since you could have rm -rf /usr/src/sys/contrib. Mine has plenty, though. The policy of FreeBSD is (and I beleive has been for a long time) that the "contrib" directories have much more lenient restrictions on what licenses are acceptable. See, for example:

                find /usr/src/sys/contrib/dev/ath -name *.uu
                cat /usr/src/sys/contrib/dev/ath/COPYRIGHT

                I beleive sys/contrib/dev/nve also has binary-only drivers too. (No COPYRIGHT notice there, so who knows what the terms a
              • Mine's in /usr/src/sys/modules/if_ndis, and I'm glad it's there otherwise this laptop wouldn't have a network connection.
                • Mine's in /usr/src/sys/modules/if_ndis, and I'm glad it's there otherwise this laptop wouldn't have a network connection.

                  Not untill you have run ndisgen (or ndiscvt) to add it there yourself.
          • It is not possible for the OpenBSD project to include closed code in the base system and retain the same quality. Every line of code in the OpenBSD base system is included in the constant code review process. Every time a bug is found in the base system, it is categorised and a search is made for all instances of bugs of that category. This leads to an incredibly secure system, because they very rarely include the same mistake twice. Including a binary driver would mean including a driver exempt from th

          • Theo, like RMS, is one of the few visible heads in the FOSS world that stands on his ideals. And I wish more people were like those two. I use Ati hardware because it's supported by the DRI project and it does the job fine since I don't play complex games anyway. I refuse to use NVIDIA's proprietary kernel drivers. I recently upgraded my box to an Athlon64 and found out there's not proprietary nvidia driver for FreeBSD/amd64. Thank $DEITY I bought a Radeon. It might not matter to you, but then again you mi

            • Thank $DEITY I bought a Radeon.

              No modern radeon card is supported by the DRI project, only pre Radeon 9600 cards.

              With a Modern Radeon card you have NO WAY WHATSOEVER to get hardware accelerated OpenGL on FreeBSD, no matter what the rest of your hardware is.

              But then, for your use that is probably not too important, which means that you could have done with nvdia hardware and xorg's nv driver just as well as with ati hardware and xorgs radeon driver, you would get virtually the same thing.
      • There was talk early in the year about Linux forking if you read slashdot.

        The issue was non GPL binary drivers in the kernel and module support.

        First off its Powell and the FCC and not greedy capitalists making the decisions to stay closed with wifi. Its required infact to be a licensee of the FCC to have permission to sell your product.

        Now the greed has spread to all markets in computers as the FCC could change its rules for any product that produces EMI. Also greed and the length it takes to file a patent

  • Can we stop this? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @05:36PM (#13363577) Homepage
    Like many articles about BSD, this one will surely have a ton of comments along the lines of "Oh no, companies don't want to give away their code, so they're all going to use BSD licensed software and the world is going to end!". This arguement is, in almost all cases, bullshit. Why? Because usually it's not the operating system that matters so much as the software on top of it, and Company X has just as much control of their own program with Linux as with BSD (or Windows, etc.). Most products do not require significant changes to the OS, if any at all, and even in those products that do, far more of the products value comes from the company's own software.

    So stop it people, the sky isn't falling.

    • Re:Can we stop this? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by The Vulture ( 248871 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @06:57PM (#13363866) Homepage
      To some extent that is true, but not always. The sticky issue is that of device drivers. Device drivers hook into the kernel, and their licensing as such has never really been clear. The general consensus seems to be that as long as you mark your module as non-GPL in the declaration, which excludes your use of some GPL'd code, your module is okay.

      Userspace applications don't suffer from these restrictions - glibc is LGPLd, as is uClibc for these reasons - you don't have to abide by the GPL in order to have a C runtime library.

      Where I see this going (as I stated in another post) is that whether Linux or BSD is used will likely depend on the hardware designers (companies like Broadcom, who make the reference designs, not companies like Linksys, D-Link or Netgear, who just base their work on reference designs).

      The sky is not falling, I agree. We'll continue see substandard products from el-cheapo manufacturers no matter what underlying OS is used. I am going to go out on a limb and say that if FreeBSD can be used in these low-power, slower CPU, small RAM/flash footprint devices, and it performs as well as Linux, then the designers will do so. It gives them that much more protection against violations of the GPL (accidental or not).

      -- Joe

  • OpenBSD (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cyberkahn ( 398201 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @05:57PM (#13363667) Homepage

    This is not intended to be a flame as I really like FreeBSD as well. FreeBSD could learn a lot from the OpenBSD project in this area. I have been absolutely amazed at OpenBSD's out of the box wireless detection configuration. I installed OpenBSD on my laptop over my WPC11 [linksys.com] wireless NIC without effort. I also had the same results with the WMP54G [linksys.com].

    • OpenBSD has a few more drivers, but there is no Free driver for my WLAN card (although there is now a very alpha one for FreeBSD 6-CURRENT). It works fine with Project Evil on FreeBSD though.
  • Long live FreeBSD!

    Sorry, my deadpan humor is getting out of control
  • Is this related to the fact that NetBSD is in so many of my PSP games? I'm not a *BSD guy, so I'm not really sure if they're related. But the pages of the manuals that deal with wireless functions always have the word "NetBSD" mixed in with the Japanese text.
    • my understanding is that like many systems, they have just borrowed the TCP/IP stack from BSD. Windows uses that too, so that tells you how different the rest of the system can be ;)
  • Apple's support alone will keep FreeBSD going. The video chip guys (ATI and nVidia) release object code drivers under closed licenses and anyone who wants can link it into Linux's GPL world. They aren't breaking the GPL, since they don't do the linking. Are the Linux users breaking the GPL? - I don't think so, but who's going to bust them even if they were.

    This case is different since these wireless companies want bundle an entire OS. Using non-GPL'ed code seems to be to their advantage. And I mentioned be
  • I have seen many clients where I used to work switch from FBSD to Linux after 5.x came out. Even with Linux threads in mysql its still buggy.

    I used to be a BSD zealot for years and now slowly switching back to Linux.

    It would be nice if the kernel designers would fix the many problems with the locks and threading and use a simplier design like DragonFLY's BSD model.

    5.x is a mess and it looks like 6.x will be based off it.
    • Even with Linux threads in mysql its still buggy.


      I suggest you read this [zawodny.com].

      I am running this exact combination on a multitude of 4 and 8 cpu boxes without any problems (for as far as mysql is concerned, there are some other problems some of which are indeed related to locking. Most notably, bind 9 sucks)
  • How many people have ever looked at sourcecode released by vendor? Even better - how many has SEEN any contributions released by vendor that have any significant impact?

    Has Realtek ever released source for their wireless driver (for 8181, for example)? Nope. Has Broadcom ever released source for their wireless driver? Nope again.

    You want to use Atheros in your AP? Fine. All companies, so far, either cash out $20,000 and get the sourcecode from Atheros, or they subcontract the job (to someone from http://www [atheros.com]
    • Well, this Atheros HAL for FreeBSD that Sam Leffler wrote has been reverse engineered by Reyk Floeter and was in the most recent release of OpenBSD as a completely open source driver/HAL combonation.

      In the future the HAL and driver may well be merged into a single driver, which can be used by anyone. So no need to pay Atheros for that source code.

      These companies do not need to release source, documentation is fine as well. Ralink released documentation and had bsd-licensed drivers made up rather quickly

      • Huh?

        Just proving the point.

        This was not a VENDOR (Linksys, D-Link, etc, etc) who provided anything back to the community, this was the manufacturer who provided clues.

        Nothing ever came back to Madwifi from ASCOM (one of the largest Atheros design "partners"), for example, or from some Taiwanese AP manufacturer, who uses Linux and Atheros in their products.

        For them GPL/BSD doesn't make any difference, since they already use close drivers/tools for their products.

        Take a look at Senao NL-5354 series of APs. On
  • One thing I have noticed in the recent year is the upsurge in Ralink (RA) WiFi devices. Taiwanese motherboards manufacturers are bundling 802.11 cards by the thousands with high end motherboards with RA cards. ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte all bundle RA cards with their "deluxe" motherboards.

    Since RA is a very Taiwanese component, and motherboards are - of course - *very* Taiwanese components, it would be excellent if FreeBSD took advantage of the opportunity to embrace RA in the same manner that Linux [sourceforge.net] has. F
    • For bonus points, PLEASE backport to 5.x and 4.x since many of us (particularly DJB and myself) refuse to move off 4.x unless it is absolutely needed.

      If you want modern hardware support, staying on 4.x is simply no option whatsoever. Backporting the ra driver to 5.x is a fair request ofcourse, and imho should really happen once 6.0 gets out of beta.

      One of the problems might be that the whole wlan support has changed in 6.0 when compared with 5.x, and this means that a bit more then just the ra driver needs
  • Does this mean that Linux will come up with an OpenBSD compatibility module to take advantage of the OpenBSD drivers?

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