BREAKING: BROADCOM OPEN SOURCES WIRELESS DRIVERS

Very good news :)

Personally I've never understood the widespread need to keep drivers closed source. The value/worth is in the hardware and open sourcing a driver can only be good for end users.
 
If MS didn't have a stranglehold on most games, DirectX sucks!!! What a great thing it would be to be able to play any game in any OS you want. :)
 
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Excellent news. Hopefully the older b43 based sources will be released too. Then finally I won't have to reinitialise wlan0 everytime I open my laptop :/
 
Edward78 said:
If MS didn't have a stranglehold on most games, DirectX sucks!!! What a great thing it would be to be able to play any game in any OS you want. :)
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Marketing. OpenGL as a "unified standard" came first from SGI, GUIs were in use long before Windows, the list goes on.
 
sr4470 said:
Marketing. OpenGL as a "unified standard" came first from SGI, GUIs were in use long before Windows, the list goes on.
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Thats true MS didnt do very much first - they did a lot *best* though. Times are changing however ;)

Fantastic news good job broadcom. We need others to follow suit now.. ATI are you listening ?
 
tntcoder said:
Personally I've never understood the widespread need to keep drivers closed source. The value/worth is in the hardware and open sourcing a driver can only be good for end users.
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Probably because things like video card drivers contain "trade secrets" or they're ashamed of them :). Also, other cheaper bits of hardware do a lot more in software than ever before so open sourcing the driver, is giving away half your product.
 
HumbleCoder said:
Probably because things like video card drivers contain "trade secrets" or they're ashamed of them :). Also, other cheaper bits of hardware do a lot more in software than ever before so open sourcing the driver, is giving away half your product.
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Retaining control over what the hardware can do is another reason.
 
masterluke said:
Thats true MS didnt do very much first - they did a lot *best* though. Times are changing however ;)

Fantastic news good job broadcom. We need others to follow suit now.. ATI are you listening ?
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Ati were suppose to have open sourced there drivers ~3 years ago, not sure if anything has come of it though??
 
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