Date: Tue, 14 Nov 1995 14:21:42 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: gibbs@freefall.freebsd.org (Justin T. Gibbs) Cc: terry@lambert.org, davidg@root.com, hsu@cs.hut.fi, current@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: ISP state their FreeBSD concerns Message-ID: <199511142121.OAA22117@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199511142020.MAA09519@freefall.freebsd.org> from "Justin T. Gibbs" at Nov 14, 95 12:20:45 pm
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> >> Adaptec does not oppose us providing our own sequencer code. > > > >No, they oppose us. Or we could use their sequencer code and (potentially) > >not have problems like this. > > No, they oppose their competitors. Adaptec's sequencer code works around > deficiencies with hundreds of periferals. That information has been > gleaned from more than a decade of experience. If you were in Adaptec's > position, would you make it publicly availible so that your competitors > can become "as compatible" as you are? There has been some talk of > releaseing a "stripped down" verison of the sequencer code for "free" > development, but they don't have the developer hours to produce it yet. On the contrary. If I were a competitor, I'd have their code torn apart withing one week of each new release. The code is useless without an AIC 7770, which you can only buy from Adaptec. The 1742 argument of "we don't want people building rip-offs of our boards and leveraging drivers for our cards to sell their cards instead" only holds water if you can legally use the download code without violating copyright in a competitors card. This has more to do with publication terms and support of developers asking questions than it has to do with them actually having anything of proprietary value that can't be gotten legally or illegally without non-disclosure. The "barrier" to competitors is a small one -- much smaller than the investment of the time to decypher their download code. It's the download interface itself which is proprietary -- I don't know about you, but all the AIC7770 based boards I've seen come with Xenix drivers with the sequencer code download image. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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