Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2006 11:57:27 -0400 From: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Cc: misc@openbsd.org, Harpalus a Como <harpalus.como@gmail.com>, "Charles M. Hannum" <mycroft@mit.edu>, "Constantine A. Murenin" <mureninc@gmail.com>, "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@freebsd.org>, Thorsten Glaser <tg@mirbsd.de>, netbsd-users@netbsd.org, miros-discuss@mirbsd.org Subject: Re: The future of NetBSD Message-ID: <200609011157.29065.jhb@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <20060901152732.GR10101@multics.mit.edu> References: <20060830232723.GU10101@multics.mit.edu> <20060831230813.GA28455@petunia.outback.escape.de> <20060901152732.GR10101@multics.mit.edu>
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On Friday 01 September 2006 11:27, Charles M. Hannum wrote: > 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. Yes. In many cases, the reason a company doesn't want to release documentation is because it doesn't really exist, except in phone calls or e-mails between the Windows driver writer and the hardware guys. Software folks are notorious for poor documentation. It would be unrealistic for us to expect hardware folks to do a substantially better job. -- John Baldwin
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