This situation has been changing rapidly over the last 2 years. Most
vendors are now forthcoming with specs, and sometimes code, and
sometimes even hardware samples, often in advance of the hardware
hitting the market.
So I think this opinion is being overtaken by events. Competition is
a good thing: since some vendors now "do the right thing" it seems likely
all will in finite time.
Also, disks are getting larger and cheaper. So it's much more
reasonable to assume that the distribution will install a C compiler
either by default, or strongly recommend that the user installs a C
compiler. So once we establish a standard mechanism by which
independing source kernel modules can be linked against the kernel (and
that means a standard place to find the kernel include files, and making
sure that the standard kernel include files are installed and match with
the kernel which was installed), we'll be able to have hardware
manufacturers ship drivers with their hardware in such a fashion that it
can be easily installed on the user's Linux systems, hopefully no matter
which distribution or which Linux kernel version (within limits) that
the user has installed.
- Ted
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