Over the years, I have wished for some sort of universal
driver, so that we didn’t need one driver for FreeBSD, one for Linux, one for
Windows Xp, one for Windows 7, etc.
I started searching the internet to see if anything was in
development on such a framework, and was surprised to see that it did indeed
exist, and was already pretty much dead before I even knew it existed.
The Uniform Driver Interface (UDI) was, created by a
cooperation of some big industry players (Intel, SCO, Adaptec, Sun, IBM, DEC,
Compaq/HP, etc).
However, I notice Microsoft wasn’t part of it, which is one
of the reasons it is currently languishing.
It’s specification was released in 2001 under a BSD-style license,
so it’s very Open-Source.
During my 'autopsy-research', I found some muttering about it being as complex and
bloated as CORBA, but I can’t find any proof of that.
I understand where Richard Stallman’s stance on UDI is coming
from, but I do not agree. I’ll get into why shortly.
First, let me state this;
The _BEST_ think for Free Software would be UDI, because the
largest thing holding back Free Software Operating Systems is drivers.
Disagree?
- Try running quality accelerated
X-Windows on FreeBSD, and a recent ATI card.
- Try booting/using
OpenIndiana on a cheap desktop quality board with a generic Marvell or other
SATA controller and Network Card?
- How’s your Intel GMA500
video working under Ubuntu?
This list is endless. Linux is in the best position for
hardware drivers as it has the larger installed base, and so hardware vendors
do have decent support. Solaris/(x)BSD’s seem to be next, and it quick drops
off the face of a cliff after that.
If you wanted to revive the interesting
Plan-9 OS, or if you
wanted to branch from an existing Free OS and make some large changes to the
kernel/scheduler, or you wanted to try and design your own OS, you’re now going
to need to write or port drivers.
This is a huge amount of time wasted on trivial matters that
shouldn’t be. I believe in re-useable code, and not doing the same thing twice. We need to understand that skilled programmers are a resource
like anything else, and we shouldn’t be squandering their time across repeating
the same work for different OSes.
Sure, it’s a rite of passage to code your own drivers – But when
you have to code 27 drivers just to obtain basic functionality for your new OS,
so you can work on what is really driving you to create that new OS, you’re
wasting time.
Some Open-Source OS drivers come from the hardware vendor
directly. A large percentage of the drivers in Open-Source OSes are reverse
engineered. While some are very stable,
fast, and feature-rich, many are not.
Why should the Free-OS crowd have to make do with lower
quality drivers than those who run Windows?
Why should the programmers on the freebsd-scsi list have to
deal with bug-stomping on reverse engineered drivers for a product that they
didn’t make, when they could be working on the CAM structure (a product they
are making)?
At the risk of over-simplifying Richard Stallman’s position,
this is how I see his stance against it;
There is a chance that a UDI driver made by/for
an Open-Source OS team would be used in a commercial product and possibly
distributed by the hardware vendor.
And you know what? Yup, there is a chance in the very early
stages of a switch-over to UDI drivers that something like that may happen. If you’re concerned, slap a GPL v3 license on
the driver you code and be done with it.
However, no hardware manufacturer will ever take drivers
from the Open-Source community and use them as their own for any considerable
period of time– They will develop their own drivers, so they can properly
support and control the quality and performance of their hardware.
If the hardware vendors want to keep them proprietary, so be
it. This is another key point (I think) in Richard Stallman’s stance
against UDI
- If the big hardware vendors could release closed
source UDI drivers, then the pressure on the hardware vendors to release
open-source drivers would cease.
That’s very true, and possibly a concern. However, I look at
this as a game of chess with big-picture goals, and short-term compromises.
Yes, you may be taking a step backwards in the Open-Source drivers category, but you’d be _vaulting_ Open-Source OS’s miles ahead.
Just imagine a copy of FreeBSD, Ubuntu Linux, OpenBSD, or
OpenIndiana with the same driver support as Windows.
As a user, think of what you could do with that system.
As a programmer, think of what you could concentrate on
instead of tracing down bugs in reverse-engineered driver that so many people
use with your software.
You do realize that with technology like WINE, and Thinapp (which works under WINE nicely), a good Firefox cross-OS implementation, we're closer than ever to properly challenging Microsoft's dominance on the PC market? If an Open-Source OS could run on anything that Windows runs on, what options would that give you?
UDI is something that the hardware vendors want (it’s why
they all joined the working group). It’s something that any OS designer would
want (less work for me? Great!), and it’s something that the end user will want
(you mean all my hardware now works with FreeBSD?)
How do we get UDI started again? It’s a bit of a
chicken-and-egg scenario:
1 - We need pressure on the Hardware Vendors to start releasing
real UDI drivers for current hardware that people want.
2- We need pressure on the Open-Source OS developers to
take the ProjectUDI sample implementations of UDI for their OS and integrate it into the recent
releases of each OS.
With drivers available, and OSes to use said drivers, UDI
will start gaining some ground.
If there are bloat or performance problems with
UDI, they will be exposed, and worked around or repaired. Are there other hurdles to UDI acceptance? Lets expose and conquer them.
I’m very interested in any comments or suggestions about
UDI, how it died, and anything we can do to get this project started again.
