OpenBSD: NDAs Versus Free Drivers

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Greg Kroah-Hartman’s announcement for free Linux driver development included the necesssary legal framework to honor NDAs when creating GPL’d drivers. This allowance was discussed on the OpenBSD -misc mailing list. In a public exchange with Greg KH, Stephan Rickauer said, “now these companies have a great excuse to keep specs locked up tight under NDA, while pretending to be ‘open.’ The OpenBSD project has made clear more than once how this will hurt Free Software in the long run. Signing NDA’s ensures that Linux gets a working driver, sure, but the internals are indistinguishable from magic. It is a source code version of a blob.”

Link: KernelTrap