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Date:      Wed, 20 Dec 2000 16:44:38 +1300
From:      David Preece <davep@afterswish.com>
To:        Justin Wojdacki <justin@chiplogic.com>
Cc:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD vs Linux, Solaris, and NT
Message-ID:  <5.0.0.25.1.20001220163018.01ada020@pop3.i4free.co.nz>
In-Reply-To: <3A401DC9.FE79B8AB@chiplogic.com>
References:  <Your message of "Tue, 19 Dec 2000 11:43:17 EST." <5.0.0.25.0.20001219111044.020739e0@mail.etinc.com> <5.0.0.25.0.20001219120619.020cbac0@mail.etinc.com> <3A4012A0.44B4CEED@bellatlantic.net>

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At 18:47 19/12/00 -0800, you wrote:
>Sergey Babkin wrote:
> >
> > The drivers are _not_ assets. When I buy a piece of hardware I
> > very reasonably expect that it would come with drivers or at
> > least the manual on how to write these. It's a part of the deal.
>
>However, if the device requires software to take on part of the
>functionality (examples: WinModems, although I'm not sure whether it's
>the driver or the OS that's doing the work there. I also suspect some
>OpenGL cards may be like this), then the driver is more likely to be
>considered an asset.

I was on the point of stepping in with a very similar opinion. While I'm 
deeply hacked off at Intel for not dropping the NDA on 82559 series 8, 
causing me to have to think twice about using them in a commercial product, 
or indeed about using Intel at all, I can see a situation where I do feel 
it is fair:

A lot of the reason why 3dfx (rip), Nvidia et al. often feel they cannot 
release open source drivers is that a substantial proportion of what these 
products do takes place on the host processor. Large quantities of research 
go into the exact division of tasks between host processor and offload 
processor, hence a large amount of their competitive advantage is derived 
from the driver code. They cannot afford to release it. Furthermore, AGP 
represents a substantial bottleneck to them, the protocol by which they get 
information down it is also of great commercial significance. Asking for 
open source drivers in these cases is much like asking for open source 
firmware on the boards themselves, simply not going to happen.

To conclude: Open source, preferred. Closed source, OK. No driver 
whatsoever, bad. Bad bad bad.

Should this really still be on -hackers?

>Justin Wojdacki

David Preece

Aside: 82559/8, how does this affect BSDi's pre-installed rackmount boxes? 
Presumably it's all going to go a little tits-up when they start getting 
series 8 parts?



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