> David Parsons wrote:
> >
> > Drago Goricanec wrote:
> >
> > > What about security. If a binary only UDI driver is available, will I
> > > risk my system's security by plugging it in to my Linux kernel?
> >
> > I don't think that the UDI have the budget for driver police who will
> > come to your house and force you to use UDI drivers at gunpoint.
>
> You really need to enlighten me here, how does your reply to Drago have
> anything
> at all to do with what he stated?
>
> He is raising a legitimate issue, security of the system and the
> possible
> lack thereof by using binary-only UDI drivers.
I suspect David's point is that, if you're concerned about security, you'll
have the same choice you have right now to buy only hardware with
open-source drivers. No one's going to make you use UDI drivers.
I'm not sure that I agree with him. I think UDI presents the real threat of
vendors switching entirely to UDI out of paranoia, and us losing all the
ground we've gained over the past several years towards getting formerly
closed spec companies to open up (Matrox, Diamond, etc.). That is, they can
make us use UDI simply by not selling hardware for which we can write
non-UDI drivers (with no specs and all the new anti-reverse engineering
laws, we're kinda stuck). I don't think we have the market share to counter
that either. Right now, our bargaining position is that they'll lose 8
million users altogether without giving us the specs and letting us write a
driver. Under UDI, the dynamic is rather different.
Also, I'm not terribly familiar with either UDI or linux device drivers, but
browsing what's floating around HP's ftp site doesn't suggest that they've
exactly thought about linux when they were formulating the standard. I'd
guess that the UDI interface for linux is going to have to be a major
kludge, simply because linux is fairly different from the "normal" Unixen
that UDI appears to be targeted towards.
I guess I just don't see what UDI gains us.
later,
chris
--
Chris Ricker kaboom@gatech.edu
chris.ricker@m.cc.utah.edu
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