Atheros Open Hal

[M. Warner Losh]

In message: <20070802235154.3d518c3d at localhost>
            Jona Joachim <jaj at hcl-club.lu> writes:
: On Thu, 02 Aug 2007 14:59:32 +1200
: "Marcos Biscaysaqu - ThePacific.net" <marcos at tpnet.co.nz> wrote:
: 
: > Hi there.
: >     It's the Atheros openhal driver supported in freebsd already?
: 
: I asked some time if there was any interest in porting OpenHAL to
: FreeBSD. See the archive of the -advocacy mailing list.
: I don't think there is any interest. FreeBSD is using a proprietary
: closed source driver, a so-called blob, for Atheros chipsets and they
: feel comfortable with it. The leaders hardly ever discuss such
: decisions.

While what you say might be literally true, the way you say it makes
it sound like a conspiracy.  The term blob is offensive to some.  And
frankly, nobody has ever submitted, that I've seen, an alternate
Atheros driver that came anywhere close to the level of functionality
in the current tree.

: Quoting from
: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/committers-guide/people.html:
: "In order to develop FreeBSD, committers must have the ability to
: openly discuss matters that will be resolved before they are publicly
: announced. Frank discussions of work in progress are not suitable for
: open publication and may harm FreeBSD."

While this is true, there's never been a private discussion about the
atheros hal on developers.  Again, you are implying black helicopters
where there are none.

Warner