Ars Technica article

[Grzegorz Junka]

> OK I've bit my tongue as long as I can on this...
> How is importing yet more Linux code into FreeBSD a better thing? Or how
> is it *fixing* anything regarding FreeBSD. For clarity; I don't dislike
> Linux. I just prefer to use (Free)BSD. I'm frankly alarmed with the 
> apparent
> volume that Linux code is entering the FreeBSD code base. I noticed 
> much of
> the UEFI bits are also converted Linux bits. I suppose for a quick needed
> stop-gap solution it might be reasonable. But it appears that a 
> tremendous
> amount of time, and effort has gone into all this, and given the 
> previously
> mentioned lack of man-power. It seems unlikely that any of this will be
> replaced with a FreeBSD equivalent. I'm not blowing smoke here. I 
> earmarked
> some time that I wouldn't be taking contracts so that I could invest some
> time on FreeBSD concerning "nits" I had that I thought could improve 
> things
> a bit. I looked into taking the time to make it nearly/fully POSIX 
> complaint.
> Browsing the code. It was clear I wouldn't stand a chance unless I 
> started
> at ~9.x where it starts to go sideways in fairly rapid succession. So I
> decided to look elsewhere. I've had some nits with the Graphics dept. so
> I thought I'd look to see where I could best spend my efforts. Then 
> the new
> Xorg landed. Well that's going a *completely* different direction than it
> was, and I don't think I want to participate in that new direction.
> I've finally landed on working on bolstering sc/syscons in an effort to
> provide graphics mode switching and detection to it.
>

Thankfully, Linux code can't enter FreeBSD base because of different 
licensing.

I hope you don't advocate for re-implementing drivers for FreeBSD? What 
about NVidia drivers that aren't even distributed with source code? 
Surely, they provide binary packages for FreeBSD, but without support 
for Vulkan for example. Without any documentation of the hardware ports 
how this could be even achieved?

Besides, I am happy when I see a vendor or developer supports Linux, 
apart from the usual Windows or Mac, not even mentioning FreeBSD. Many 
don't even differentiate beyond Linux, listing support for FreeBSD under 
Linux and other distro sections!

I think we need to be pragmatic about it. Neither AMD nor NVidia will 
provide FreeBSD drivers and FreeBSD can't implement those drivers, 
either for objective reasons (man power) or because it's not feasible 
(NVidia). If we can reuse existing drivers that the manufacturers are 
releasing and updating frequently, and only focus on the compatibility 
layer, then why not?

--GrzegorzJ