Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 01:23:29 +0300 From: Heikki Suonsivu <hsu@cs.hut.fi> To: jkh@violet.berkeley.edu (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com Subject: ISPs and other commercial interests, please read! [was Re: T1] Message-ID: <199507132223.BAA18336@shadows.cs.hut.fi> In-Reply-To: jkh@violet.berkeley.edu's message of 12 Jul 1995 17:07:57 %2B0300
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There's the Cronyx/Sigma sync ppp card, but I'm not sure what its
top end speed is.. I don't believe that we have anything currently
capable of doing T1 right out of a FreeBSD box.
Its <= 256kbps, if I correctly understood the documentation.
That said, I have 2 ARNET SYNC/570i cards here - one two port and one
four port - and they'll do up to 5Mb/sec. All I'm lacking is a driver!
The main chip that needs to be dealt with here appears to be the Hitachi
HD64570, so if anyone out there has prior programming experience with this
then I'm definitely interested in hearing from you!
There is a driver written for NetBSD 0.8 (?) for SDL communications' board,
which is based on the HD64570. It would need work. I have the data books
for the chip, but haven't had time to look at the driver.
ARNET has graciously loaned me these boards for the express purpose of
pressing them into some skilled programmer's hands, but such hands have
proven to be a little harder to find than I had hoped.. :-(
I know three people who already said that they might be interested.
I'd therefore like to put the following proposal to the various ISPs and
others with an interest in mid-speed comms out there who might be reading
this message:
I have already promised (two weeks ago) 2000 FIM, about $450 donation for
free (available under both Berkeley style license and GPL), portably
written, clean and documented driver. I require NetBSD compatibility and
stronly hope it will written with some thought about Mach port in mind. I
can arrange hardware if it isn't available (sorry, no cisco to test it
with, just FreeBSD).
I could probably give more in hardware or in form of an Internet connection
in Espoo or Helsinki in Finland (I require the link to run the arnet
hardware in this case :).
I know $450 is not much, but I'm not able to pay the work alone. Maybe it
is a start, anyway.
There may be other projects I might be willing to donate, like a better
news server.
With that in mind, it begins to make more sense that the various
FreeBSD users, both commercial and non, should want to band together more
closely and without regard for of any kind of external competition.
I have been thinking about fund which would take money earmarked for a
specific software project and give it to authors who release the software
which fullfills the given requirements. I have several things in mind
which I would need but can't afford to pay the development alone. I guess
this a bit similar.
If you couple this with the fact that the FreeBSD Project itself has no
real resources of its own, except perhaps for a common code base and a
couple of machines with sources on them, then it quickly becomes clear
that to really increase the quality and coverage of FreeBSD's feature set
in the same period of time that a commercial OS vendor would (if not
faster) then something more has to happen.
I'm pretty certain that this would be much more successfull if it wasn't a
FreeBSD specific thing. I'm not willing to support driver development if
it is done for FreeBSD only, not even for NetBSD.
Some project members may elect to donate equipment, funds for purchasing
such equipment (or paying an external engineer) or a full or part-time
engineer themselves. It would be the job of the project coordinator (either
inside or outside the project) to match donations with the needs of the
task and see that it reaches completion in a reasonable period of time.
Better way to guarantee it is finished in a reasonable period of time is
not to pay (at least lot of it) before the work is finished. This won't
work with large projects, but they will have to do intermediate releases
anyway.
--
Heikki Suonsivu, T{ysikuu 10 C 83/02210 Espoo/FINLAND,
hsu@cs.hut.fi home +358-0-8031121 work -4513377 fax -4555276 riippu SN
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