Re: [9fans] apropos of the glendix post

["Michaelian Ennis" <michaelian.ennis@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 1:47 AM,  <lucio@proxima.alt.za> wrote:
>> if linux can use binary blobs, why can't plan9 do it too?
>
> I think the BLOBs are platform specific, but I may be mistaken.  If
> I'm right, there's no way that we'd get any momentum to turn this
> around.

Sometimes the binary bits are loaded into the cards, maybe most often,
and therefore can be done in plan9 as well.  Depending on the vendor
you may need permission from them to distribute the binary part.

> problems, but rather on the academic value of the ease in which
> problems could be solved if one followed the 9 True Ways :-)

Or maybe they have already written the drivers they need, contributed
them to the community, and are busy developing solutions based on
Plan9.

> That said, how do we mobilise the community to focus on useful
> drivers?  I suppose we start with Ron's wish list, then we explore

I suspect that some of these drivers are missing still because the
hardware is not available to the developers who can write them.

> Russ' partially complete postings (i386 emulation, Centrino drivers,
> I'm sure I've forgotten many more) and thirdly we post a list of
> willing contributors, possibly split into code writers and advisors.

I think the one of the BSD projects, OpenBSD perhaps, used to accept
hardware donations to this end.  If we had a wayto get the hardware
and the technical documentation in the same place as the developers we
could get more hardware supported.

Ian