Could EU force hardware manufacturers to make working drivers for Linux?

Re:Could EU force hardware manufacturers to make working dri... by TheRealPomax on Sunday October 01, 2023 @02:07PM (#37728672)

rather than "disallow vertical integration", start with "disallow lock-out". By all means, vertically integrate as much as you want but it should not be illegal for someone to take your hardware and use it for another purpose that you have no say in, or write and run software using your hardware without you you have a say in that.

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Re:Could EU force hardware manufacturers to make working dri... by cassianoleal on Sunday October 01, 2023 @02:19PM (#37728796)

Yeah, someone on that Reddit thread said it right - force the companies to publish documentation for the interfaces. Let the hackers write the drivers without painful, slow and error-prone reverse engineering.

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Re:Could EU force hardware manufacturers to make working dri... by TheRealPomax on Sunday October 01, 2023 @07:01PM (#37731864)

I wouldn't even go that far: by all means, don't publish your interfaces, but if someone reverse engineers them: legalize that. And don't offer tax cuts to companies that don't publish their schematics and interfaces.

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Re:Could EU force hardware manufacturers to make working dri... by loup-vaillant on Sunday October 01, 2023 @03:27PM (#37729590)

It would be more prudent indeed to just force hardware vendors to release the specs, and it would be even more prudent still to just disallow lock-out. I would start there like you suggest.

I do suspect however that we'd miss out on many benefits if we don't go all the way the way to disallowing vertical integration eventually. It's also something I rarely see spoken of.

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