Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 15:15:47 -0700 From: Bob Beck <beck@bofh.cns.ualberta.ca> To: Scott Long <scottl@samsco.org> Cc: Theo de Raadt <deraadt@cvs.openbsd.org> Subject: Re: Adaptec AAC raid support Message-ID: <20050319221547.GN22961@bofh.cns.ualberta.ca> In-Reply-To: <423C8E58.60605@samsco.org> References: <200503191743.j2JHhW1u024795@cvs.openbsd.org> <423C7EB1.9060704@samsco.org> <1111264576.25785.10.camel@blue.fries.net> <423C8E58.60605@samsco.org>
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> I'm not stuffing anything down anyone's throats. I'm enabling FreeBSD > users to use the resources that are available to them. That's quite > different than cancelling developer work and threatening to remove a > driver due to a political dispute. Freedom isn't about coercing others > to believe the same things that I believe. Actually Scott, there's exactly the problem. While I'm sure you think that providing a binary only management tool helps FreeBSD users who have this hardware, I think it's rather the opposite. Let me put it in another light: Let's say an ethernet card vendor closes off and puts under NDA the interface to their card's control mechanisms. you can have a free driver to recieve and send packets, but in order to set an address, or configure the card, you can't use ifconfig, you have to use a proprietary binary only program that can't be included with the OS, and doesn't work on anything but i386. Would having support in there for that particular ethernet card, and encouraging users to buy more of them really be helping FreeBSD users in the long run, or hurting them? Or perhaps it would it be helping the vendor's lawyers to have ammunition to keep documentation from being released, and hurting the user community in the long run. -Bob
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