Hi, any one around who still has the ebuild for the old 6.x version of the net-dialup/hsfmodem ebuild ?
I just upgraded my system, and emerge updated to the now unmasked 7.x version of this package unfortunately the 7.x tree (as has been mentioned in several bugreports) is commercial and the hardware driver is crippled until "activated" with a license key while 6.x was working fine and unlimited with a less restrictive license I still have the tar.bz2 file but Im missing the ebuild to downgrade again Of course one might argue I could buy a license - but I never will: Selling drivers for money to get hardware working you already bought is a very dangerous business model that should in no way be supported. A commercial driver is actually worse than no driver at all, because the company selling the commercial product has all interest (and contracts with the manufacturer) to keep there monopoly established by keeping the specs secret and hold their "intellectual property" under restrictions that would make any 3rd party driver illegal and impossible Actually from there its a very close step to selling time-restricted licenses that need monthly fees to work or something like this Imagine - buy your hardware - then pay protection to the driver seller to be able to use it... Its like what printer manufacturers are doing with the ink - but thats another story As had been stated in one of the bugs - you should keep an old ebuild with the still free driver around would be a shame if I had to switch to Microsoft Windows to use my modem and go online ... (just kidding) So could anyone of you devs reput an old ebuild into the portage tree? Or at least point me to an archive where it could be found? thnx Corvus
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