Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: The i2o Bus: A Conspiracy Against Free Software? (fwd) | Date | Fri, 18 Jul 1997 15:29:43 -0400 | From | Benjamin Saller Bender <> |
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Dan Hollis <mailto:goemon@sasami.anime.net> writes: >Someone should make a comprehensive web page about why I2O is wrong, why >the NDA is wrong, the real reason behind the NDA, why I2O is nothing new, >compare I2O to MCA (that should scare a lot of management types), etc. > As I understand it, and I've only glanced at the design overview, I2O is designed so that hardware vendors can write drivers to a layer falling between the OS and the devices. This layer is controlled by a i960 running something along the lines of vxWorks. The OS (linux in this case) only needs to be able to talk to the interface exported by the i960. We don't need the detailed specs of the underlying communications between the i960 and the device being controlled. So you say, how do we obtain the protocol to talk to the generic communications layer? Here is my (maybe naive) thought on the matter. If we don't get it from the hardware vendors there sales suffer. Thats the bottom line. Linux users and the other free OS are no longer totally ignorable from the view of the all powerful dollar. It is in the best interest of the hardware vendors to make there drivers work on a number of OS, even if M$ gets a little peeved. The cost of driver development for hardware vendors drops if they only need to write it once for it to work on 95/98/NT, OS2, Linux, etc. If this is the way of things they will have to make the spec to talk to said drivers public.
-- Benjamin Saller Bender <case@AppliedTheory.com> AppliedTheory Communications Software Engineering Group http://AppliedTheory.com/ Sentio aliquos togatos contra me conspirare.
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