> Thinking about it a bit more ... when systems become more and more > closed, as x86 systems are becoming now, the field of innovation is > reduced to what a single company can think of -- the monopoly > provider, so to speak.
you're right "nobody wants to do that" is not a good argument. but on the other hand, it's not clear to me that the slippery slope "more and more closed" holds. it could also be that things go in cycles. when i started in pcs (1983), everything was wide open. but by 1990 with microchannel &c. things were much more closed off. new things tend to be closed off for various reasons. sometimes i think companies are embarassed to document first attempts. the problem with arm and whatnot is that there is no standard platform. so drivers in the embedded world tend to have a much shorter lifetime than pcs, since platforms churn so quickly. and the differences tend to be deeper. so the left hand taketh what the right hand giveth. - erik
