Re: Packaging Linuxant's driverloader?

[Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu>]

MJ Ray <mjr@dsl.pipex.com> wrote:
> On 2004-01-09 03:48:49 +0000 Joel Konkle-Parker <jjk3@msstate.edu> 
> wrote:
> 
> > I guess the meat of my question applies to ndiswrapper 
> > <http://ndiswrapper.sf.net> as well. ndiswrapper itself is GPL, but 
> > to work 
> > properly, requires the Windows drivers for the network devices it is 
> > trying 
> > to configure. Does this somehow prevent it from going into Debian, or 
> > could 
> > the package just request those files from a Windows partition or 
> > something?
> 
> Does ndiswrapper require them to work properly? The main part of 
> ndiswrapper is a kernel module that I think provides an API normally 
> found on Windows. The package also provides tools to load and use the 
> Windows drivers. Even with no Windows driver loaded, the API is there, 
> so it could be seen as "working properly" but unused. As far as I can 
> tell, the Windows drivers are not used by the build process at all.

I think it is analogous to Quake.  Quake's source is free, but to do
anything useful (or fun) requires the shareware wads.  So until
someone actually writes a free driver that ndiswrapper can use, I
would say that it belongs in contrib.

> I await the replies of others wiser than myself with interest.

Still waiting...

Regards,
Walter Landry
wlandry@ucsd.edu