<story><title>Could EU force hardware manufacturers to make working drivers for Linux?</title><url>https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/16wv53f/could_the_eu_force_hardware_manufacturers_to_make/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>askonomm</author><text>Well that world would suck immensely, with horrible integration between hardware and software like exists right now outside of the Apple world. Case in point: can you copy text on your phone, and paste in your computer (and vice versa), seamlessly as if it were the same device, without any configuration, hacks or programs needed? Things like that are amazing and I&amp;#x27;d never give up. And I&amp;#x27;m sure most people wouldn&amp;#x27;t want to give this up either just because Linux fanboys want to.</text></item><item><author>loup-vaillant</author><text>They don&amp;#x27;t necessarily have to: there&amp;#x27;s another, more comprehensive hammer they (or the US for that matter) could use: disallow vertical integration.&lt;p&gt;Force hardware vendors to &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; sell hardware. If any software that can be changed remotely or by the user is off limits. Even firmware. Conversely, software vendors can &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; sell (or freely distribute) software. For vendors from abroad, don&amp;#x27;t go extra-territorial, just force them to chose: either they only sell hardware in the EU, or they only sell software.  Intel and microsoft would have no problem. NVDIA might complain very loudly. Apple would likely have to split itself.&lt;p&gt;Now the complicated part is how to define a company. We don&amp;#x27;t want a single company to just split itself into 2 legal entities that work so closely together they might as well be the same company.&lt;p&gt;Do that, and you&amp;#x27;ll get much better than device drivers for &lt;i&gt;one&lt;/i&gt; free OS. You&amp;#x27;ll get the necessary specs required to make it work on &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; OSes. Even better, the user-facing hardware interface will start to matter, and there will be some selection pressure to drive the more complex ones, or the non-standard ones, out of the market. (Won&amp;#x27;t be ideal, I can see a particular over-complex architecture win out, similar to x86, but at least there won&amp;#x27;t be that many left, so writing a driver for most devices will actually be possible).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mschuster91</author><text>&amp;gt; Well that world would suck immensely, with horrible integration between hardware and software like exists right now outside of the Apple world.&lt;p&gt;Why? The hardware people at companies like NVIDIA or Apple already &lt;i&gt;have to&lt;/i&gt; write detailed documentation for their stuff anyway so that the software people can do their side.&lt;p&gt;Assuming they do a good enough job at writing documentation and testing their hardware, it should not be a problem for Linux developers to write appropriate drivers. Hell there are a very few select people able to write high quality drivers even with zero documentation (see Asahi Linux).&lt;p&gt;The only ones in trouble would be the vendors of crap SoCs who ship extremely buggy hardware and make up for the lack of QA in software quirks instead.</text></comment>
<story><title>Could EU force hardware manufacturers to make working drivers for Linux?</title><url>https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/16wv53f/could_the_eu_force_hardware_manufacturers_to_make/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>askonomm</author><text>Well that world would suck immensely, with horrible integration between hardware and software like exists right now outside of the Apple world. Case in point: can you copy text on your phone, and paste in your computer (and vice versa), seamlessly as if it were the same device, without any configuration, hacks or programs needed? Things like that are amazing and I&amp;#x27;d never give up. And I&amp;#x27;m sure most people wouldn&amp;#x27;t want to give this up either just because Linux fanboys want to.</text></item><item><author>loup-vaillant</author><text>They don&amp;#x27;t necessarily have to: there&amp;#x27;s another, more comprehensive hammer they (or the US for that matter) could use: disallow vertical integration.&lt;p&gt;Force hardware vendors to &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; sell hardware. If any software that can be changed remotely or by the user is off limits. Even firmware. Conversely, software vendors can &lt;i&gt;only&lt;/i&gt; sell (or freely distribute) software. For vendors from abroad, don&amp;#x27;t go extra-territorial, just force them to chose: either they only sell hardware in the EU, or they only sell software.  Intel and microsoft would have no problem. NVDIA might complain very loudly. Apple would likely have to split itself.&lt;p&gt;Now the complicated part is how to define a company. We don&amp;#x27;t want a single company to just split itself into 2 legal entities that work so closely together they might as well be the same company.&lt;p&gt;Do that, and you&amp;#x27;ll get much better than device drivers for &lt;i&gt;one&lt;/i&gt; free OS. You&amp;#x27;ll get the necessary specs required to make it work on &lt;i&gt;all&lt;/i&gt; OSes. Even better, the user-facing hardware interface will start to matter, and there will be some selection pressure to drive the more complex ones, or the non-standard ones, out of the market. (Won&amp;#x27;t be ideal, I can see a particular over-complex architecture win out, similar to x86, but at least there won&amp;#x27;t be that many left, so writing a driver for most devices will actually be possible).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>delta_p_delta_x</author><text>&amp;gt; Case in point: can you copy text on your phone, and paste in your computer (and vice versa), seamlessly as if it were the same device, without any configuration, hacks or programs needed?&lt;p&gt;I am guessing that AirDrop, Sidecar, etc have absolutely nothing to do with hardware-software integration, and have ≥ Layer 3 implementations. KDE Connect and Microsoft My Phone are competitors.</text></comment>