From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Oct 17 11:15:32 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from critter.freebsd.dk (critter.freebsd.dk [212.242.86.163]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 20EE437B405; Wed, 17 Oct 2001 11:15:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from critter.freebsd.dk (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by critter.freebsd.dk (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id f9HIF2a39799; Wed, 17 Oct 2001 20:15:03 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from phk@critter.freebsd.dk) To: Doug Hass Cc: void , Mike Smith , Ted Mittelstaedt , Leo Bicknell , Jim Bryant , MurrayTaylor , freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FYI In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 17 Oct 2001 13:10:23 CDT." Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 20:15:02 +0200 Message-ID: <39797.1003342502@critter.freebsd.dk> From: Poul-Henning Kamp Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Let me cut through all this with a bit of experience if you permit: 1. BSD licensed sources are undoubtedly always preferred. 2. Other open-source licences are the best alternative. 3. closed source solutions are always risky because you don't know if the company will be willing to, or even around to, update the driver for future versions of the OS. One way to moderate #3 is to do as we did with the DiskOnChip driver for M-systems flash-disks: They gave a copy under NDA to an open source developer (me) who then produces an object only driver. That way at least one person will be able to produce new versions of the driver if the company goes titsup.com or gets bought by M$ or whatever... Over and out... -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 phk@FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message