Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 21:45:39 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: brett@lariat.org (Brett Glass) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com (Terry Lambert), jcm@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org (Jonathon McKitrick), chat@FreeBSD.ORG (freebsd-chat) Subject: Re: IBM Message-ID: <200001202145.OAA18179@usr01.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <4.2.2.20000118162503.0193bc60@localhost> from "Brett Glass" at Jan 18, 2000 04:46:53 PM
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> >I can't tell if you are saying this is a Windows crash or a > >BSD crash... if a Windows, all I can say is "Well, Duh!, that's > >the reason for Windows, it's what it does". > > It's under Windows; after all, the modem doesn't work AT ALL > under BSD. But while Windows is unstable, the modem driver > should not be coded so badly as to lock up the machine. So you are complaining about WinModems in general, and using a particular instance as an example. > >If you are complaining about a BSD crash, it is perfectly legal, > >in Findland, Germany, and elsewhere, to take the Windows drivers > >and run them through "Sourcer" from V Communications, Inc. (Frank > >van Gilluwe's company, author of "The Undocumented PC"), and > >then use this documented source code to as interface documentation > >to create a BSD driver. > > While Frank's an excellent programmer, I somehow do not think that > Sourcer will disassemble the MWave code. ;-) It disassembled a network card driver for me, so that I could hack it and reassemble it to fix a bug. It will certainly disassemble and comment OS entry points for x86 code that is used to load the MWave CODEC. If you are talking about the CODEC itself, then I think you will need to contact the company that licenses it, probably in binary form. This is probably _not_ IBM, but instead a third party vendor. [ ... disassembly to document interfaces ... ] > I'm not sure whether it's legal or illegal here. The only case > in which I've heard of reverse engineering being claimed to be > illegal is Microsoft v. Stac, which was settled. It is illegal in the US everywhere shrink-wrap licensing is legally binding. The "Millenium Copyright Act" will incidently make this "everywhere in the US", and will additionally apply it to things like videos and CDs. So be ready to say goodbye to used videos and CDs if it passes. Regardless, it _is_ legal in most of the EU and other non-EU member European countries, it's just not being done. The only thing that _is_ being done, is whining about a lack of drivers BTW, as the Compaq case showed, you can reverse engineer in the US, so long as you clean-room it. The Stac lawsuit came about by virtue of them naming thier compresstion code "DRVSPACE.SYS", taking advantage of the fact that Microsoft engineered the IO.SYS to load it by name (an anti-competitive practice, in itself) to give their code a special hook to allow booting from a compressed disk. > >If that isn't enough, the MWave modem was widely criticized when > >it was released, as any "Winmodem" or DSP codec-based modem so > >far released. Unless you got a prerelease of the hardware, you > >have only yourself to blame. > > There wasn't any other option on that machine. PCMCIA. I know for a fact that modems were an add-on option, unless they were hooked through a sound card, in which case they are a non-option (e.g. don't expect the phone connector to work just because you paid for it). > If I'd known that > IBM would do such a poor job of writing drivers, or about > the OTHER flaws in that unit (which none of the reviewers had > documented), I wouldn't have bought it. The chip vendor wrote the driver. IBM only wrote the loader (if that). I expect that it was really the vendor. Tell me, if you bought a PC with a Diamond video board or an Adaptec SCSI controller during the black days of both those vendors, would you have expected it to work under a non-Windows OS? > Ditto if I'd known > how badly they'd support OS/2 (which is what I wanted to run > on it when I bought it). When did you buy it? I know for a fact that OS/2 is only supported as a legacy system, for eveything but POS systems, and it's unlikely that your laptop is part of a POS system. Let's narrow that down: Winmodems post-date OS/2 as a supported product on anything but POS systems. > I already have a copy of Sourcer, plus Andrew Schulman's Windows > disassembly tools for it. But again, I don't think Sourcer can > disassemble the MWave code. You are looking too deep, then. You don't want to disassemble the MWave code, you only want to disassemble the Windows loader for the MWave code, and write a FreeBSD loader that loads the code. The MWave code that is non-x86 code is going to be the same for all supported OSs, regardless, just like the SCO version and Windows NT version of the Adaptec RAID controller microcode are the same, and only the loader code for it differs. The one concession on this point which I will have to make (and you will have to deal with) is that there is likely a fixed amount of main CPU required in order to run the CODEC, which is why the things are so cheap. You will have to modify the quantum clock and the FreeBSD scheduler to accommodate the existing MWave code needs in this regard. [ ... Winmodem CODEC licensing ... ] > Most often, the vendor of the hardware has already paid the > required royalty. Rockwell pays royalties on the Heatherington > patent for all buyers of its hardware. I'm sure that, in the > case of the ThinkPad, the royalty has been paid before the > computer leaves the shop. Read the fine print; it is likely restricted to a license for Windows as the OS. If it's not, go for it. > After I lost the use of it for a month and a half and had > to purchase a replacement in the interim. I had the same thing happen with a car. Welcome to the new so-called "service economy", where we can all produce no tangible results or goods, and get paid anyway. [ ... IBM service philosophy ... ] > No, I'm afraid that my opinions are based solely on actual > experience, not indoctrination! ;-) Apparently not including your "valiant" Customer Care Representative. > >Well, that's too bad. Unfortunately, if there's no customer > >base for off-brand OSs, then there will never be support for > >those OSs forthcoming. > > Should I sacrifice myself on that altar? Especially when IBM > is saying "Linux, Linux, Linux" and ignores e-mail asking > about BSD support? It appears that IBM is already on the Linux > bandwagon and is not even doing very well at backing THAT up > with action. Linux gets you press. Linux is nothing more than a vehicle for getting press. IBM had opportunity to buy other Whistle-like companies that used Linux, but bought Whistle instead because of the intellectual property rights dilution effects of the GPL. Believe me, there is no love of Linux in the legal departments of any of the apparent Linux boosters out there; if you have a patent at all, you let the marketing department hold Linux up to get their press and to keep them from whining, but you make them hold it at arms reach, much in the same way you would hold a dead skunk. Try an experiment: send the same email from a psuedonym, asking the same questions you are asking about BSD, but substituting Linux instead. I expect you to get as much response as you got for BSD; the position one takes towards ones customers is seldom the position one takes towards the press. > >I'm pretty sure that it's the same reason Adaptec invented their > >HIM layer for microcode: to prevent people from building clone > >hardware that utilized drivers that they had invested engineering > >effort in writing. > > Since the drivers for OSes such as Windows would have GUIs that > proudly display the name of the printer for which they were intended, > it seems unlikely that a company would want to make a printer that's > compatible with someone else's proprietary drivers. However, there > IS an advantage in creating a standard language. HP has had great > success due to PCL. Adaptec drivers are integrated into Windows. If there is a GUI, it is a third-party add-on, and not an integral part of the driver. > > > For the life of me, I don't understand why Lexmark wouldn't > > > want the UNIX market to use their products. > > > >What UNIX market? How many lost sales have they suffered > >because of this? Where's the IDC report to back up the lost > >sales numbers to the marketing people? > > Would they care even if presented with these numbers? Yes. Executives of large companies only talk in terms of the dollars or in terams of "deals". If you can't speak their language, then they can't hear you; they see your lips moving, but that's all they see. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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