Life in Balance: Amit D. Chaudhary’s Blog
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Greg Kroah-Hartman, author of Linux Kernel in a Nutshell writes on his blog: Free Linux Driver Development!

Yes, that’s right, the Linux kernel community is offering all companies free Linux driver development. ….

… you will receive a complete and working Linux driver that is added to the main Linux kernel source tree. The driver will be written by some of the members of the Linux kernel developer community (over 1500 strong and growing)

…. If your company is worried about NDA issues surrounding your device’s specifications, we have arranged a program with OSDL/TLF’s Tech Board to provide the legal framework where a company can interact with a member of the kernel community in order to properly assure that all needed NDA requirements are fulfilled.

This offer is in effect for all different types of devices, from USB toys to PCI video devices to high-speed networking cards. If you manufacture it, we can get Linux drivers working for it.

There is also a FreedomHEC unconference equivalent of WinHEC conference with an fairly large list of device driver developers participating.

This means times are changing.
It could mean better support for hardware out of box for Linux. It also means for Software Developers like me and many of my ex-colleagues who have done linux device driver development for corporations in the past, some of the work is going away. Interesting…
HatTip: Slashdot Linux Kernel Devs Offer Free Driver Development