From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Oct 22 12:26:07 1995 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) id MAA03835 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 22 Oct 1995 12:26:07 -0700 Received: from hutcs.cs.hut.fi (root@hutcs.cs.hut.fi [130.233.192.2]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) with SMTP id MAA03829 ; Sun, 22 Oct 1995 12:26:03 -0700 Received: from shadows.cs.hut.fi by hutcs.cs.hut.fi with SMTP id AA23857 (5.65c8/HUTCS-S 1.4); Sun, 22 Oct 1995 21:25:48 +0200 Received: (hsu@localhost) by shadows.cs.hut.fi (8.6.10/8.6.10) id VAA12777; Sun, 22 Oct 1995 21:25:58 +0200 Date: Sun, 22 Oct 1995 21:25:58 +0200 Message-Id: <199510221925.VAA12777@shadows.cs.hut.fi> From: Heikki Suonsivu To: dennis@etinc.com (dennis) Cc: "Jordan K. Hubbard" , Heikki Suonsivu , hackers@FreeBSD.org Subject: RE: Freeware reward????? In-Reply-To: <199510221742.NAA07437@etinc.com> References: <199510221742.NAA07437@etinc.com> Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk dennis writes: > Given that most > commercial companies have trouble doing commercially acceptable products in > this area > , whats the chance that some guy with way too much free time can do better? They can't do it better, usually, unless some kind of system can be built to make free software a profitable business. Cygnus is an example of this; I think there other alternatives like funds into which people can donate money for a specific piece of free software to be built, like this specific case, although in lack of suitable fund we need just to make promises. If the drivers are completed, within a year we will see which method turns out to be the best. If cards supported by freely available drivers sell more then than those with no freely available drivers, in FreeBSD environment, we can make conclusions. Until that, we can only speculate. Maybe we should drop -hackers off the receivers? > Is this for the "best" resulting product, or the first? Or don't you care? We are not searching for the best product we can get. We are searching for a product which happens to do what we need: make either two FreeBSD machines or a Cisco and a FreeBSD machine to talk to each other over a synchronous link. ET cards would probably do the job, but I do find free drivers an additional bonus which I give high value for. -- Heikki Suonsivu, T{ysikuu 10 C 83/02210 Espoo/FINLAND, hsu@cs.hut.fi home +358-0-8031121 work -4513377 fax -4555276 riippu SN