From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Oct 5 13:18:53 2010 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 60CD9106564A for ; Tue, 5 Oct 2010 13:18:53 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jon@radel.com) Received: from wave.radel.com (wave.radel.com [216.143.151.4]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DDF188FC15 for ; Tue, 5 Oct 2010 13:18:52 +0000 (UTC) Received: by wave.radel.com (CommuniGate Pro PIPE 4.1.6) with PIPE id 9857108; Tue, 05 Oct 2010 09:18:52 -0400 Received: from [192.168.43.221] (account jon@radel.com HELO braeburn.local) by wave.radel.com (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 4.1.6) with ESMTP-TLS id 9857105 for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Tue, 05 Oct 2010 09:18:41 -0400 Message-ID: <4CAB25B1.6050906@radel.com> Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2010 09:18:41 -0400 From: Jon Radel User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.2.9) Gecko/20100915 Thunderbird/3.1.4 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: multipart/signed; protocol="application/pkcs7-signature"; micalg=sha1; boundary="------------ms090302090501070305090702" X-Radel.com-MailScanner-Information: Please contact Jon for more information X-Radel.com-MailScanner: Found to be clean X-Mailer: CommuniGate Pro CLI mailer X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.5 Subject: Re: Which OS for notebook X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2010 13:18:53 -0000 This is a cryptographically signed message in MIME format. --------------ms090302090501070305090702 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On 10/5/10 7:31 AM, Carmel wrote: > > I realize that at this point someone will inevitably chime in and play > the "blame the manufacturers" whine. If that were factually correct, > then no one else would be able to supply drivers and support for > hardware that FreeBSD has left orphaned. > I'm somewhat unclear on how that follows. Might it not be that many=20 manufacturers, busily dealing with Microsoft, and easing into Linux now=20 that it has significant "mindshare," have simply decided that there's no = economic benefit to releasing detailed hardware specs in a form that=20 works for FreeBSD developers? I really fail to see why you think the=20 fact that the manufacturer itself has released binary drivers for=20 Windows, and possibly Linux, and/or released hardware specs under NDA=20 (non-disclosure agreement) to certain business partners, has any bearing = on whether sufficient information to write a driver is available to any=20 FreeBSD programmer with permission to use it to write an open source driv= er. --=20 --Jon Radel jon@radel.com --------------ms090302090501070305090702--