Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Mon, 29 Apr 1996 18:21:04 -0500 (CDT) | From | "Daniel A. Taylor" <> | Subject | Re: Must modules be GPL'ed? |
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Reason #5; Really clever software. The company does software interface tricks to get more out of the hardware that are non-intuitive. I believe that this is the reason most companies actually have for driver NDA's. After all, _anyone_ can count chips, but how exactly do you write a stereoscopic, rectilinear, sonic-screwdriver driver?
Dan Taylor On Sat, 27 Apr 1996, Alan Cox wrote:
> > >but I feel that it would be wrong to ALLOW to supply binary modules. > > > > Some hardware vendors feel that by publishing the software needed > > to access their cards, they reveal too much about their hardware > > to possible competitors. > > > > I don't this is the right tack to take, but they do have a point. > > I've seen various reasons for NDA's and some good solutions too. > > 1. "Corporate Policy". This seems to translate as I don't know but it > would be easier to skin elephants with a toothpick than change it. These > people seem however to understand commercial advantage > > 2. "Support". This happened with Connetix and the quickcam. They didnt > want to get millions of weirdo's phoning up saying "I've plugged my quickcam > into my gameboy using the board I found in the magazine" and it doesnt work.. > You can now get documentation that requires you promise to specifically > state that the code isnt not theirs, not supported by them etc. > > 3. "We never thought about it". To an extent this happend with localtalk > boards. Most of the info is now on the net in the form of DOS driver source > once people asked enough. > > 4. "Very clever hardware". This I take with a pinch of salt. I've > reversed a couple of boards the legal way (looking at the chips etc) and > to be quite honest its not always that true. Sometimes it can be. > > > It's up to the vendor I guess - the sad thing is they lose the ability to > make easy drivers (by letting someone write it for them for Linux), and users > lose out through less support. I have had one fun conversation. Someone was > ranting about how DOSemu let people monitor ports and watch I/O access and > it was terribly wrong and evil. He was even less impressed when I pointed > out that its not hard to do directly on the bus, by linking a test tool with > a loadable module (remember its only a .o file) and other things ;) > > Alan > >
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