Qualcomm Calls To 'Kill All Proprietary Drivers For Good' 195
An anonymous reader writes "Next week at the sixth Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, two Qualcomm Atheros engineers will be making a stand for killing all proprietary drivers for good — across all operating systems. The Qualcomm slides go over their early plans. Do they stand a chance?"
chance or no... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know where I'm throwing my money the next time I need such hardware!
A possible prerequisite... (Score:5, Insightful)
Killing software patents.
Start with their GSM/CDMA/LTE basebands. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fagets (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody is telling you what to do. Just like RFCs don't tell you what to do.
They tell you what you should do. This is an important distinction.
Of course, if you ignore those recommendations and do your own thing: you are on your own.
Longer answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Accomplishing such a feat would require the market to be largely informed and interested. Neither is the case.
Re:Android (Score:4, Insightful)
Android is free. Google doesn't control the use of Android by telecoms and phone makers. It would be nice if Google could use their considerable influence to convince hardware makers to release open drivers, but you need to pick your battles one at a time. They managed to stop Apple from cornering the smartphone market and helped to accelerate the cost reduction in smart phones. Hopefully, with time, Google (and Qualcomm) will be able to convince hardware manufacturers to make their drivers open.
Re:Quick Answer (Score:5, Insightful)
And nobody ever installs Windows, themselves, either, on a notebook.
Boy I hope that's sarcasm. Otherwise I fear I must question my own existence, as I've done just that many, many times.
Who in their right mind would leave the factory installation of windows on a notebook in the first place if they didn't have to? Why spend 2 hours cleaning all the adware bullshit off of it, searching the web to see what the hell half the start-up programs even are ("Gee, do I need kdjsdksjhdjsh.exe to run on startup? What about eroiuerrurrjkffl.exe???"), missing shit, and all of that, when you can spend 45 minutes doing a fresh install of Windows and then maybe another 45 minutes doing updates/driver installs and have a clean machine with all that bullshit removed from the get go?
Step one on any new notebook I buy is always a fresh install of windows. I don't play that "recovery disk" bullshit.
I know it used to be a lot more difficult in the past to find drivers and shit for notebooks, but it's really not that bad anymore. Certainly not in my own experiences.