From owner-freebsd-hackers  Fri Mar  9 14:51:59 2001
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From: Soren Schmidt <sos@freebsd.dk>
Message-Id: <200103092251.XAA66180@freebsd.dk>
Subject: Re: if_fxp - the real point
In-Reply-To: <20010309221250.2384337B71B@hub.freebsd.org> from Bill Paul at "Mar 9, 2001 02:12:50 pm"
To: wpaul@FreeBSD.ORG (Bill Paul)
Date: Fri, 9 Mar 2001 23:51:54 +0100 (CET)
Cc: msmith@FreeBSD.ORG (Mike Smith), hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
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It seems Bill Paul wrote:
> "But Bill, you work for BSDi now. Can't they get you manuals?" Working for
> BSDi is irrelevant: I can't sign any NDAs if I want to release driver
> source, and I do want to release the source. And there isn't a designated
> person at BSDi that I can turn to to help turn up the heat on recalcitrant
> vendors. I'm not willing to go sneaking around and mooching these things
> from secret sources since it just perpetuates the officially sanctioned
> vendor stupidity. I don't want to have meetings, negotiations or "strategic
> partnerships," I just want the stupid programming manuals without NDAs.

I hear you!

I have the same problems getting ATA controller/device docs out of the
vendors, but sometimes it helps trying from another angle. 
One example is Promise, I mailed and phoned them for about a year, and
got exactly nothing back, but it took Jeroen (Asmodai) one mail to
get thier attention AND docs (thanks!), the morale being that sometimes
it helps getting other people involved. Please understand that I dont
mean that everybody and his dog should be mail bombing a vendor to
get docs, that we leave for the other guys :)...

-Søren

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