Re: [Madwifi-users] Article about Atheros chips in this week's Economist
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From: Greg C. <ma...@at...> - 2005-01-09 22:39:24
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Well said, and thanks. Neither we working on the driver nor Atheros have any intention of shutting down the project, and remain committed to creating support software for all of the myriad different reasons that people choose Linux or BSD rather than something else. We are also tremendously grateful for the great people who have created the FAQ (Matt Foster) and madwifi.net (Alvin Oga) and the IRC channel (Michael Renzmann) and who are all active on the mailing lists especially with helping out the newcomers. We all benefit from the coders who figure out patches for the odd things that continually creep into RedHat kernel build scripts. There are also some companies who use madwifi in products who have provided funding that have contributed to important improvements in the driver. These companies have allowed code developed for their use to go into the open source release. So, there's a lot going on and its mostly good. My attitude is to continue moving forward with completing the things that need to be done to have a truly world-class tool and not dwell on the complaint of the moment. g David Goodenough wrote: >Greg, > >To be honest I am sure that the worth of this article is not in the detail, >but rather that the issue gets aired. Its not quite true to say that >Broadcomm have no linux support, there is a driver but its binary only >and the only place you can find it is in the LinkSys WAP54G firmware. >You are absolutely right to say that this is a much broader problem >than just Wifi cards, and you list some of the others, I could also add >such things as Scanners where some manufacturers are totally open >(or at least sufficiently that workable drivers have been written) and >some are totally closed. > >I, and I am sure, ALL of the users of Atheros chips using the MadWifi >driver, are VERY appreciative of all that you have done, and the >only reason I for one am using Atheros based cards is the existance >of MadWifi - all my solutions are Linux based so anything closed >interface devices might as well not exist as far as I am concerned. > >It is a great shame that the article is wrong on the detail, especially >if the author knew some of the people involved and could have got >it right. But then journalists often get the wrong end of the stick - >one once quoted me as saying that IBM were incapable of writing >software, which is patently untrue and not at all what I said. > >Please do NOT take this as a reason to shut down MadWifi, but >if it, or a well crafted letter in reply, could have positive effects >to open up hardware where that is appropriate the open source >community and our growing band of users can only benefit. A well >crafted reply (and I am quite prepared to send one - but it must be >100% correct so I am going to need some help) could also bring more >users to view the Atheros chipsets and cards build from them in a >more appropriate light. > >David > > >------------------------------------------------------- >The SF.Net email is sponsored by: Beat the post-holiday blues >Get a FREE limited edition SourceForge.net t-shirt from ThinkGeek. >It's fun and FREE -- well, almost....http://www.thinkgeek.com/sfshirt >_______________________________________________ >Madwifi-users mailing list >Mad...@li... >https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/madwifi-users > > |