Re: Binary Drivers

[Wolfgang Draxinger <wdraxinger@darkstargames.de>]

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Am Donnerstag, 21. Dezember 2006 21:50 schrieb David Schwartz:

> Honestly, I think it *is* wrong to sell someone a physical product
> and then not tell them how to make it work. If you're not actually
> selling them the physical product but selling them a way to get a
> particular thing done, then don't represent that you're selling
> them physical product because that would presumably include the
> right to use it any way they wanted provided it was lawful.

My opinion, too. I wasted months to get specifications for a 
particular HW once and I've heared them all:

* "We can't publish documentation due to 3rd party patents" (Unh, I 
thought, that patents are there, _that_ you can safely publish).

* "It would be expensive for us to publish documentation" (Wouldn't 
that save the in house development of drivers, the kernel developers 
would that for you _and_ maintain it).

* "We've lost the documentation" (Aaahaaa, lame excuse)

And sometimes they are honest: "We don't want to publish". If it is 
rare, special hardware, like measurement interfaces I found out, that 
you can put a lot of pressure on them, if you return them their 
hardware, and claim your money back telling them the reason, why 
their product is inapropriate. If they don't accept that, sue them 
for fraud (you expected a working product, but it doesn't work with 
your system). But most of the time they fear to loose one of their 
precious customers and get quite talkative. But in the consumer 
market a margin of +/-0.5M users doesn't put force on vendors selling 
~10M units, so not buying is not an option.

Personally I've given up to tell HW manufators directly. Instead I 
tell people what to buy and what not and to send protest letters the 
hardware vendors - hey for something that registration cards coming 
with the product must be good for.

On the long term I think, that the only way to force hardware vendors 
to publish all documentation is by going the legislative way, i.e. 
getting politically active, with the goal being a law, that anyone, 
selling a product _must_ provide detailed documentation for free, 
that enable one to understand use and maintain the product and it's 
individual components without requiring additional restricted 
information from the manufactor.
Anything else creates a maintenance and support monopoly for the 
manufactor, which distorts the free market.

IMHO hardware documentation disclosure is of uttermost importance, 
since if the manufactor goes out of buisnes you mostly have some bad 
luck.

2 years ago I bought on eBay a small DECT PCI adapter with the 
intention to connect it with Asterisk someday - knowing that there 
are no Linux drivers and that the manufactor got bankrupt and was 
bought by a competitor. I didn't even got replies to my documentation 
requests addressed at the new owner of the IP. Quite disappointing. 
At least the driver CD contains also VxD drivers, which are quite 
easy to reverse engineer, but I haven't yet found the time to do so.

BTW: Does anybody know a not too expensive way to have some silicon 
created from a VHDL? Eventually it would be easier to design our own 
hardware, than being dependent on some manufactor. But there are 
plenty of quite trivial patents, like this one, making you "aaarghh":
<http://tinyurl.com/yl4d2n>

But I think, that Linux can also add some force on the manufactors if 
we want a little bit: Already Linux is a vital component in many 
operations. For example Hollywood: There are virtually none rendering 
farms running not under Linux, there, a few MacOS X, a few Solaris 
and a few Irix. The same goes for the workstations. Now give Linux 
another 2 years to diffuse into widespread market. I'm quite sure, 
that within the next year a lot of users will look for alternative 
OS, when their Windows Vista refuses to reactivate, once they changed 
their hardware for the 2nd time. WinXP support is said to be 
cancelled a lot earlier. People still have their hardware then, not 
wanting to invest into a Mac, just to get a good OS. Instead they 
will remeber that free Knoppix/Kanotix/Ubuntu LiveCD, wich came with 
their computing magazine and that they tried out, found it nice but 
didn't migrate fearing the effort. But the isntalled OS refuses to 
work, demanding reactivation and that LiveCD is a comfortable way to 
continue work. Then they install it, and at some point HW manufactors 
_must_ provide Linux drivers. It doesn't matter if they are OSS yet. 
Just let them deliver and gain Linux a not neglectible consumer 
market share. Then forbid CSS drivers in the kernel, not aprupt, but 
with enough migration time. Hardware manufactors will have to 
disclose information, if they don't want to loose customers. But 
since the migration is done smoothly customers will experience their 
systems failing - due to the older CSS only drivers. But HW vendors 
are forced to open the spec for new products, to that the drivers are 
not illegal and may be delivered with the product/integrated into the 
kernel. Without working drivers the product is worthless and people 
using Linux won't buy a product not supported. It's a pervasive long 
time plan, but it might work - if Microsoft plays along and keeps 
it's user gaging restrictions.

This is purely politics, I know, but unfortunately this is probably 
the only way to get it done. Marketeers and attornerys are technical 
illiterates numb to technical argumentation. I don't like it, but it 
seems, that we've to adopt some of their methods...

Wolfgang Draxinger

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