On Wednesday 05 January 2005 3:22 pm, Steve Hill wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> > What I think we probably will have to do is just work torwards seeing if
> > we can come up with our own open wireless hardware. I know there was
> > a recent thread on lkml about an open video card -- anyone know where
> > that ended up?
>
> This may be a silly point, but there *was* good 802.11g hardware available
> which worked well with the fully open drivers. I presume the
> manufacturers are moving to the "softmac" design instead because (for
> them) it is cheaper. However, the point is that the working designs are
> already there and it may be that buying the existing design which is being
> phased out is cheaper for the FOSS community than developing a whole new
> open device.
Softmac doesn't necessary mean evil all the time. The adm8211 has a fully GPL
driver for Linux. There is no firmware to worry about either. ADMtek actually
helped me with the driver, by providing the source to their old 2.4 binary
Linux driver and sending me (from Taiwan to New Jersey, fedexed overnight)
two sample cards to test with. Oh yes, and it's quite cheap. (but 802.11b,
which maybe a problem for some people)
If ADMtek can do it, why can't other manufacturers?
-Michael Wu
pgp1YZ3j68FLM.pgp
Description: PGP signature
|