At 07:58 PM 12/19/2000, Julian Stacey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>Dennis wrote to Boris et all:
> >
> > >Device Drivers
> > >--------------
> > >I donīt like binary only device drivers. The code of an operating
> > >system is more complex than a driver. if a company does not want to
> > >publish the sourcecode, the should go away.
> >
> > You've lost all credibility here. Well supported device drivers should not
> > require source. I'd prefer a commercial (preferably the manufacters)
> > support other than some guy in the ural mountains who fixes things IF he
> > can get a card with a problem and IF he can duplicate the problem and IF
> > hes a good enough coder to get it done.
>
> > "hacker mentality" is not mainstream. 98% of people dont have a clue what
>
>`Mainstream' is a target some seek to avoid. Micro$oft exemplifies
>mainstream.
Your "mentality" has caused you to alienate yourselves from the rest of the
world, which serves your ego but not the FreeBSD community. Acts such as::
1) refusing to fix the kernel Make to work properly with binary modules
2) making statements like "if i dont get source i dont want it"
3) taking every opportunity to mock those who dont provide source
indicate to corporate america that you have no interest in having them
develop significant products for Freebsd
A successful strategy is to encourage all developers to contribute
products, binary or source, and let end users decide which products to buy
or use. With such an inclusive strategy, customers have choices. with
binary distributions you have competition, with source everything is the same.
Binary distributions are not about piracy as much as they are maintaining a
feature advantage over your competitors. If you provide source with
improved features, someone will port it to the cheapest hardware available
and then you end up competing with your own technologies.on other hardware
and you lose your margins.
There is no incentive for companies to invest resources in developing
better software for their FreeBSD based products, because there is no
guarantee that people have to buy their boards to utilize it (if they can
easily be ported to others). so, there is no corporate-driven progress. Why
should D link provide their load balancing technology to freebsd if you can
just use it on an intel or 3com card? they are in the business of selling
boards, not helping their competitors sell boards.
db
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