Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2001 17:44:57 -0500 (EST) From: Doug Hass <dhass@imagestream.com> To: "Andrew C. Hornback" <achornback@worldnet.att.net> Cc: Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, Jim Bryant <kc5vdj@yahoo.com>, MurrayTaylor <taylorm@bytecraft.au.com>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, Alfred Shippen <ashippen@metromatics.com.au> Subject: RE: FYI Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1011015173356.7061A-100000@ims1.imagestream.com> In-Reply-To: <00fd01c155c4$8851d5a0$6600000a@columbia>
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> > 1) FreeBSD users can still get the WANic 400 and RISCom cards from the > > second hand market, as another person mentioned. > > What is wrong with THIS picture? You're telling people to purchase used > hardware, instead of purchasing components from your company? *shakes his > head* Perhaps you missed the earlier post. Someone posted about purchasing used gear or auction gear to "go it on the cheap" so to speak. Personally, I think wasting money on used, out-of-warranty, unsupported gear is akin to playing Russian Roulette with your money. I'd buy new every time. > > > 2) WANic 400 series cards are still available in quantity. If the market > > for FreeBSD is as large as you claim, then you or someone else in the > > community should have no problem snapping up a quantity of these cards and > > reselling them to interested parties. I'll go one step further: If anyone > > contacts me about the WANic 400 series, mentions that they are for > > FreeBSD, I promise to give an extra 15% discount over and above our normal > > volume discounts just to illustrate my desire to support the FreeBSD > > community. > > Perhaps a better idea, if I may be so bold, would be to offer samples of > the newer cards (520 series, I believe they are) to FreeBSD developers > interested in producing drivers, software and utilities for these cards. > After all, you are saying that the 400 is EOL. Wouldn't the idea of > engineering samples be more beneficial to all involved? Those have ALWAYS been available. My phone rings all day. I pick it up, and it's never a BSD developer wanting to order cards and port drivers. :-) All you have to do is ask. Driver source, demo cards, and development tools have been available to the BSD community since 1995. To date, only BSDI took up the effort, and only briefly. Where are all the FreeBSD developers and why aren't they beating down my door for these samples and code? I'll get back to this in a minute. > > 3) Virtually ALL of our customers, save for OEMs making their own > > products, purchase complete routers. Going this route would eliminate the > > need to have FreeBSD support, as any user would have a standalone router. > > This sounds quite argumentative to me. Simply because everyone else is > buying a router, there's a refusal to support FreeBSD, since people with > "true routers" would have no need for using FreeBSD as a router engine. Nope--it's just a matter of laying out the options. There are 4--buy used, buy new in quantity, and buy routers. You can also develop drivers for the "new" cards (they aren't new--they've been out for 3 years). > It's a vicious cycle that I believe we're seeing here... chicken and the > egg, or rather, the driver and the market. Without a proper driver, there > won't be a market for this card to be used with FreeBSD. However, without > the manufacturer seeing visability in this market, there won't be a driver > as it would be a waste of their developers time. It's not a vicious cycle at all. Ted has said repeatedly in earlier e-mails that there is a large market for the 400/405 and that discontinuing them was foolish. I've actually proposed a solution that solves both problems. I'll recap for those who missed my earlier message: 1) If the *BSD community has the 400 series cards in such high demand, someone should step up and order them in quantity. This solves the issue with the cards not being available in one and two unit quantities. You'll have a ready supply from someone in the community, and you'll be supporting the community when you buy the cards from them. 2) If someone from the FreeBSD community orders the cards, ImageStream will put up a minimum of $8,100 for a developer or developer group to port drivers for the rest of the cards. Actually, it's 15% of the purchase price of any 400 series cards. The more "in demand" the current cards are, the more money we'll pledge to make sure that FreeBSd drivers exist for ALL of the cards. My phone number is below. If these cards and the future of the drivers are as important as everyone who has posted says they are, let's move quickly toward a solution. Regards, Doug ----- Doug Hass ImageStream Internet Solutions dhass@imagestream.com http://www.imagestream.com Office: 1-219-935-8484 Fax: 1-219-935-8488 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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