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Subject: Re: The future of NetBSD
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On Fri, Sep 01, 2006 at 01:08:13AM +0200, Matthias Kilian wrote:
> They don't have to write device drivers at all, they just should
> write good documentation.

Unfortunately, the "documentation" often isn't so hot either.  I'll
give you an example.  Even with both code and "documentation" from
Realtek, we still had to reverse engineer how some parts of the RTL8180
work.  And though it works now, our understanding is still incomplete.

It is far easier for a manufacturer to spew out a Windows driver
in-house, where they have direct access to the people who designed the
hardware, so this is what they do.  The Windows driver model is pretty
much designed around this approach.

What we really want is not just documentation, but support from their
engineers.  The Linux community is starting to get this in some places.