On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, Nicholas Knight wrote:
> From: "Jeff Garzik" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

> > FWIW, -every single- Windows driver source code I've seen has been
> > bloody awful.  Asking them to release that code would probably result in
> > embarrassment.  Same reasoning why many companies won't release hardware
> > specifications...  The internal docs are bad.  Really bad.
> 
> While I understand that internal docs and source are often simply a mess, I
> fail to see why this should prevent a company from releasing specs or
> source.
> Sure somebody will come along and say "What on earth were you people
> THINKING?!", and then they'll get over it and do something useful with the
> specs and/or source to the drivers (or if they don't, somebody else will)
> I seriously doubt it'd lead to a company seeing a drop in sales because of
> it... and even if they did, I'd say it's a calculated risk, as they could
> well pick up a higher number of new customers than the number of old
> customers they lost due to wider ranging support.
> And even if their specs and code were the worst peices of trash on the
> planet, I'd still thank them for opening them up to the public.

You might thank them.  The other opinion is... people look at the
newly-released garbage source code, and say "wow, the driver I'm running
is shit.  I'm switching to another type of hardware."  etc.

Maybe harmless, maybe PR disaster.

        Jeff




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