Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 18:47:37 -0800 From: Justin Wojdacki <justin@chiplogic.com> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs Linux, Solaris, and NT Message-ID: <3A401DC9.FE79B8AB@chiplogic.com> References: <Your message of "Tue, 19 Dec 2000 11:43:17 EST." <5.0.0.25.0.20001219111044.020739e0@mail.etinc.com> <5.0.0.25.0.20001219120619.020cbac0@mail.etinc.com> <3A4012A0.44B4CEED@bellatlantic.net>
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Sergey Babkin wrote: > > The drivers are _not_ assets. When I buy a piece of hardware I > very reasonably expect that it would come with drivers or at > least the manual on how to write these. It's a part of the deal. > There are absolutely no reasons for the card manufacturers to > withhold this information, their hardware is their copyright > protection device and source of profit. > > -SB > FWIW: The drivers are not really assets if the device's functionality is exclusively (or nearly so) in the hardware of the device (unless you're _really_ paranoid about someone copying your hardware interface). However, if the device requires software to take on part of the functionality (examples: WinModems, although I'm not sure whether it's the driver or the OS that's doing the work there. I also suspect some OpenGL cards may be like this), then the driver is more likely to be considered an asset. Therefore, asserting that the device manufacturer has no reason to withhold this information is unfortunately incorrect. I don't know how common this is, and I don't particularly recommend it most of the time, but it's a way to save money in low end systems and devices (as your hardware design costs can be cut down significantly), and so it's not beyond reason that some devices may work like this. -- --------------------- Justin Wojdacki justin@chiplogic.com Chiplogic Inc. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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