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Synaptics Uses Legal Threats to Kill an Open-Source DisplayLink Driver

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The “Vino” driver, a clean-room, reverse-engineered Rust kernel driver for modern DisplayLink hardware (written partly with AI), is gone, Phoronix reports. Synaptics sent the developer a cease and desist claiming patent violations, and the GitHub repo is no longer public. The correspondence is attached to an LKML thread.

My take

Old USB2 DisplayLink hardware had open drivers. If you’re buying a dock for Linux, this is a good reason to pick a native USB-C/Thunderbolt DisplayPort dock over a DisplayLink one.

God Bless, and Happy hacking!

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