userspace driver API ?

[Dieter]

> I've been thinking about similar things for a while...   Though I have
> a few concerns...
> 
> a) a stable API is something that Linus has touted as something that will
> not happen for Linux, so yes, it's "stable" but can we truely depend
> upon that?

>From the bits I read, it sounds like it is the interfaces within
the kernel that will change at will, the interfaces between the
kernel and userland will be stable.

> b) w/o direct DMA, it's not as useful, and implementing direct DMA
> isn't that difficult (I do direct DMA to userland buffers for bktrau
> and cxd)...

So propose an extension to allow DMA?

Additional concerns include:

Did they get anything significantly wrong?

Did they leave out anything besides DMA?

Could this create any security problems?

It could help the binary-only crowd, since binaries in userland
aren't quite as bad as binaries in the kernel.