rtl8187b: puzzled at reg_table

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Jan  2, 2009, Larry Finger <Larry.Finger at lwfinger.net> wrote:

> Alexandre Oliva wrote:

>> Any news on this front?

>> Thanks in advance.  Looking forward to a positive response from you all.

> I'm not sure what you want.

You mentioned you were getting in touch with Realtek to get their input
on this device.  I was wondering how cooperative they were.

Other than that, I'm trying to decide whether those bits can be
considered Free Software (i.e., none of the 4 essential freedoms can be
substantially denied), before I include it in Linux-libre.

> We took the Realtek Linux driver and put the difference between that
> driver and the RTL8187 device into the Linux driver.

Right.  That's why I'm following up with your upstream, to figure out
how it got there, and whether we can get enough information to set it
apart from 'black magic' and make it possible for a user to adapt it to
suit her own needs.

> That code was incorporated into kernel 2.6.27. The are ongoing
> improvements, but the driver works very well.

I've had trouble suspending one of my notebooks with an rtl8187b WiFi
interface, but I haven't investigated whether that's a consequence of
the removal of those bits.  I know some people are working with Lemote
to try to address this same problem on their 100% Free laptops.  We'll
see.

Thanks,

-- 
Alexandre Oliva           http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
You must be the change you wish to see in the world. -- Gandhi
Be Free! -- http://FSFLA.org/   FSF Latin America board member
Free Software Evangelist      Red Hat Brazil Compiler Engineer