The purpose of this project named
GnuHwDb is to provide :
- yet another hardware database compatibility list for GNU/Linux (and possibly others free OS)
- hardware database requirements to implement them and help to identify "libre hardware", working hardware, nearly-working hardware, paperweight
- existing resources to identify what is currently missing to the end users, this is currently used to identify must-have or currently missing functionalities
- typical questions related to hardware to keep in mind end-users' requirements
- a to do list for what's remains to be done ;-)
As you can see a top / down approach has been chosen as there are already many existing projects, each focusing on a specific approach, many forgiving the main issue : free drivers are only obtained with libre hardware.
Libre hardware can - for the moment - be defined as "a free driver exists and works". Unfortunately, this definition is circular :-(
I could stress the view that libre hardware is characterized by : open specification, blue-prints available, free software (no "binary blob" for firmware), documented interfaces (methods & parameters) and documented free driver (BTW other thought about it before :
http://opencollector.org/Whyfree/open_hardware.html ).
For the moment, though, I prefer to characterize libre hardware as having a
maintainable free driver and be unambiguously identified (through unambiguous brand name & technical parameters).
A project has been opened : see
http://dev.librehwdb.tuxfamily.org (contributors welcome ! :p)
