Greg Kroah-Hartman's announcement for free Linux driver development [story] included the necesssary legal framework to honor NDAs when creating GPL'd drivers. This allowance was discussed on the OpenBSD -misc mailing list. In a public exchange with Greg KH, Stephan Rickauer said, "now these companies have a great excuse to keep specs locked up tight under NDA, while pretending to be 'open.' The OpenBSD project has made clear more than once how this will hurt Free Software in the long run. Signing NDA's ensures that Linux gets a working driver, sure, but the internals are indistinguishable from magic. It is a source code version of a blob." OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt [interview] called the free driver effort a farce, "you are trying to make sure that maintainers of code -- ie. any random joe who wants to improve the code in the future -- has LESS ACCESS to docs later on because someone signed an NDA to write it in the first place. You are making a very big mistake."

Greg pointed the discussion to his FAQ in which the final question asks about the BSD operating systems and the answer states, "what about them? They are free to do whatever they wish, I have no input into their development at all, sorry." Greg further clarified, "well, as my goal is to have a GPL driver for everything, I don't see how this can hurt :) Now others can have different goals, and that's great and fine. I'm not saying you can't work on something if you wish to do so."

"The Linux kernel community is offering all companies free Linux driver development," Greg Kroah-Hartman posted in an open offer on the lkml, for all types of devices "from USB toys to PCI video devices to high-speed networking cards." He explains, "all that is needed is some kind of specification that describes how your device works, or the email address of an engineer that is willing to answer questions every once in a while. A few sample devices might be good to have so that debugging doesn't have to be done by email, but if necessary, that can be done." He added, "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." Greg suggests that companies participating can allow their developers to focus on drivers for other operating systems, "and you can add 'supported on Linux' to your product's marketing material." He further explains:

"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). This driver will then be automatically included in all Linux distributions, including the 'enterprise ones. It will be automatically kept up to date and working through all Linux kernel API changes. This driver will work with all of the different CPU types supported by Linux (for the CPUs that support the bus types that your device works on), the largest number of CPU types supported by any operating system ever before in the history of computing."