[lugm.org] the importance of hardware documentation

[Loganaden Velvindron]

Chris & I looked deeply into the SiS code and realised that
the chipset labeling was pretty misleading. I was able to write
a diff to make it work. 


It's a sad state of affairs. I emailed the Linux developer who works
on SiS chipsets. He also happens to be a SiS employee. No reply up to
now. So much for co-operation among free software developers...

2 years ago, I got a taiwanese USB keyboard that wouldn't work. It had an 

additional keycode. Intrigued I emailed the company, but they didn't
reply back. I also came up with a diff to make it work on openbsd &
netbsd by guessing.


This affects not only OpenBSD/NetBSD or FreeBSD. It even affects Linux
users. How can you fix your chipset support in Linux ? Essentially, this
kind of support is limited to 1 or 2 people only. They don't share with the
rest...

Linux is free with shackles







________________________________
 From: selven <pcthegreat at gmail.com>
To: LUGM Discuss Mailing List <discuss at lugm.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, 4 January 2012, 13:46
Subject: Re: [lugm.org] the importance of hardware documentation
 

Am not against NDA, simply because in the short run this may be bad, but in the long run, better hardware support means, hardware manufacturers would have to have support free software whether they want it or not, because this is what the market will want.


On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 1:31 PM, Daniel Shaw <daniel.shaw at point-oh.net> wrote:

On 4 January 2012 11:10, Loganaden Velvindron <gnukid1 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> Linux developers are very open to signing NDAs just to get hardware support:
>> From http://lwn.net/Articles/203562/
>
>
>> This is exactly what has happened with SiS ! Sorry, you're terribly mistaken
>> here.
>
>No, you misunderstood me. I completely agree that NDAs are bad in
>exactly the way you mention. My point is that although it's common
>(far too common) it's not EVERY vendor. There are pleasant exceptions.
>
>Another great example of a very problematic hardware vendor is
>Broadcom (mentioned in your lwn link).  Compare this with Intel. So my
>point is that next time you buys a laptop, pick the one that has intel
>wifi, not broadcom and next time you pick a server get the one with
>Intel NICs, not broadcom.
>
>I'm not disagreeing with your rant - I am offering one possible course
>of action, which is: vote with your wallet.
>
>
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