Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 19:30:20 +0100 From: "Gary Palmer" <gpalmer@FreeBSD.ORG> To: Jeremy Sigmon <jsigmon@www.hsc.wvu.edu> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Companies who want NDAs Message-ID: <11848.832357820@palmer.demon.co.uk> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 17 May 1996 10:31:16 EDT." <Pine.BSF.3.91.960517102953.3613C-100000@www.hsc.wvu.edu>
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Jeremy Sigmon wrote in message ID
<Pine.BSF.3.91.960517102953.3613C-100000@www.hsc.wvu.edu>:
>
> Has anyone complied a list of companies who require NDAs and thus will
> not have FreeBSD drivers made for them?
>From the top of my head:
Buslogic won't release programming details of their latest and
greatest card without NDA. (Forgotten the name, sorry).
SMC (or at least in the past) didn't want to release the spec for
their 100bT EISA card (which had a custom chipset).
Xircom (see other discussion)
There are others ... perhaps a look through the mail archives (see the
search engine on the WWW pages) would be productive too.
I think a point to be made here is that a lot more cards COULD have
drivers written for them, if (a) a person with the required knowledge
had such a card to work with, (b) said person had time and (c) the
card was worth his/her time supporting. Perhaps we should support a
lot more quirky, unusual cards, but is a driver for an 8bit SCSI I
card (no DMA support) worth the hassle? It'd maybe get 2 people use it
EVER and would be very slow. Considering the number of people who know
how to write device drivers is finite, and they often have quite a lot
on their plate already, unless a card is obviously mass market and a
lot of people would use such a driver if it existed, it's probably
better moving on to other work.
Gary
--
Gary Palmer FreeBSD Core Team Member
FreeBSD: Turning PC's into workstations. See http://www.FreeBSD.ORG/ for info
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