[lugm.org] the importance of hardware documentation

[Loganaden Velvindron]

Hi,

Linux developers are very open to signing NDAs just to get hardware support:
From http://lwn.net/Articles/203562/

In many others, however, this information
is provided to a specific company or developer under a non-disclosure
agreement (NDA), with the understanding that the resulting driver would then be
released under a free license.  This approach has, beyond a doubt, made
more drivers available for use with our systems; it has become a common way
of doing things, especially in the Linux world. 


This has been pushed by Leading Linux developers like Greg Kroah !
http://kerneltrap.org/node/7729

Greg Kroah-Hartman's announcement for free Linux driver development [story] included the necesssary legal framework to honor NDAs when creating 
GPL'd drivers.  This allowance was discussed on the OpenBSD -misc 
mailing list.  In a public exchange with Greg KH, Stephan Rickauer said, "now these companies have a great excuse to keep specs locked up 
tight under NDA, while pretending to be 'open.'  The OpenBSD project has made clear more than once how this will hurt Free Software in the long 
run. Signing NDA's ensures that Linux gets a working driver, sure, but 
the internals are indistinguishable from magic. It is a source code 
version of a blob."  OpenBSD founder Theo de Raadt [interview] called the free driver effort a farce, "you are trying to make sure that maintainers of code -- ie. any random joe 
who wants to improve the code in the future -- has LESS ACCESS to docs 
later on because someone signed an NDA to write it in the first place.  
You are making a very big mistake."

This is exactly what has happened with SiS ! Sorry, you're terribly mistaken here. 




________________________________
 From: Daniel Shaw <daniel.shaw at point-oh.net>
To: LUGM Discuss Mailing List <discuss at lugm.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, 4 January 2012, 13:35
Subject: Re: [lugm.org] the importance of hardware documentation
 
On 4 January 2012 10:23, Loganaden Velvindron <gnukid1 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> I'm sick of wading through linux source code to get clues about how some
> crappy piece
> of IDE controller is supposed to work. IDE is OLD technology, what's the use
> of locking
> documentation ? SiS, Broadcom and the other stupid manufacturers should stop
> behaving
> like a bunch of idiots and just put hardware docs on FTP like realtek, & VIA
> do.

You are absolutely right!

> The large open source vendors
> (Linux, OpenSolaris ?, and freebsd) do not push for hardware documentation to be
> available.

However, this is where I disagree. Perhaps not all vendors push and
perhaps the ones that do, do no do so hard enough. But many Linux
vendors are aware of this issue and do make some effort.

In any event, agree or disagree, my suggested course of action is to
vote with your dollars or rupees: Don't buy hardware with SiS or
broadcom chipsets. Try to always pick the models that use Realtek,
Via, Intel etc.

Have a great 2012!

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