The (stable) Linux userspace API was announced about a year ago, but has not been implemented until now. Torvalds has namely decided to include the latest updates in the kernel, which in short means that we now have a stable userspace driver API for Linux. Hopefully, this means no more Kernel panic due to unstable drivers and that the drivers can remain closed (the major part of them at least), which is something some companies are desperately craving. Drivers included in the kernel has to be open source, but through this approach the userspace part of the driver can remain closed. It also means that drivers does not need to be updated every time the kernel gets updated.
However there is one major drawback that needs to be addressed before graphics and other heavy traffic services can use the userspace driver API; there’s no DMA transfer between the Kernel and the userspace. Until then we can only hope that the developers agree that this is a good way to develop drivers for Linux.
