[GNUz] ndiswrapper - licences...

[Jim Cheetham]

On Apr 10, 2006, at 8:01 PM, Don Gould wrote:
> What are peoples views on ndiswrapper?

An evil necessary only to operate with hardware that cannot be replaced 
-- in RMSs world, he would do without networking if there was only 
NDISwrapper.

> Drivers are written by manufactures based on code from chip suppliers 
> for xp os then used by ndis.

The NDIS wrapper is free (iirc) but the drivers themselves are closed 
-- you are unable to look at them to see how they work, you do not have 
the source. You cannot rebuild your computer software from scratch. If 
the manufacturer withdraws the code (because they no longer market the 
card) you may not have any way to download it (or perhaps to download 
it legally).

It's also questionable about the status of some code in the absence of 
a licensed copy of the relevant microsoft OS -- something the WINE 
project will have investigated, I'm sure.

> Neil and I used ndis this afternoon to get new nics up and running 
> with in minutes.  We didn't have to track down drivers for the chip 
> sent.

Yes -- NDISwrapper is an extremely quick and effective solution :-)

> It got us functional but are we still floss?

No. ;-)

> Personally I'm good with this as I wasn't being asked to pay money to 
> a third party just to use my system.  Thou I guess the card 
> manufacture did pay money to the chip manufactures.

Well, your attitude always seems to be more towards pragmatism than 
purism. That's fine :-) but you'll have difficulty labelling yourself 
:-)

-jim