Re: The future of NetBSD

On 05/09/06, Marco Peereboom <slash@peereboom.us> wrote:
> > I don't think that binary only drivers are well enough.
> > Surely better than nothing but ...
>
> No fucking way.  No support is FAR FAR better than a blob.  Yes, really!

Indeed! When something brakes, do you want it to continue to work as
if nothing has happened and lose your data silently, or do you want it
to give you some indication that it needs attention?

* With binary drivers, it's always broken (and if it's not, it's
guaranteed to be broken in the future), but some people tend to
[foolishly] think that it's working.

* With drivers written from proper documentation by developers who
know their OS, it just works.

BTW, I'd argue that the same principle applies to the
manufacturer-supplied drivers for closed-source operating systems like
Windows -- it's better to have the drivers written by people who know
the OS it's written under, not by some random people hired by the
company that produced the hardware (which would never be the same
people who designed the hardware anyway, because people who design
hardware don't usually write software for it, and vice-versa).

Cheers,
Constantine.
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