On Thu, May 18, 2000 at 07:46:23PM +0200, Johan Verrept wrote:
> Jim Barber wrote:
>
> > It is encouraging that Alcatel have plans to support their USB modem on Linux
> > and Macintosh in the future,
>
> The future is nearer than you think...
>
> > but of course that still leaves out many others
> > (*BSD, OS/2, BeOS, etc).
>
> It is just impossibly for Alcatel to develop drivers for each of those
> OS'ses.
> The manpower and cost for that would just be too much and the possible
> profit is too little. (Profit, after all, is the goal of every business,
> whether you and I like it or not.)
> This doesn't even taken into account that it is almost impossible to
> attract the people who can actually write such drivers. (I can assure
> you do not want to start writing a (for example ;) windows driver from
> scratch if you've never done it before...there are MANY pitfalls. I am
> sure this is more (windows ;) or less (linux) true for all OS'ses
> however.)
Okay. This isn't really what I meant. I realised shortly after submitting
the mail that I could have worded things better. So let me clarify.
I think that it is good that Alcatel is doing the work to release Linux and Mac
drivers.
The fact that the specs are being released along with a sample driver is
excellent news. :)
I understand that it is unreasonable to expect a company to write drivers for
every conceivable operating system out there and I do not expect it.
Releasing the specs is good enough and it looks like more and more companies are
starting to understand this.
What I meant was that although Alcatel will have Win98, Linux, and Mac covered,
(and others by releasing the specs), British Telecom's decision to only supply
a USB modem for home use effectively locks all non-Windows users out until the
drivers are available.
We are lucky that Alcatel is providing good support for their hardware.
Like Alan pointed out, what if BT had chosen a different modem provider who
wasn't as helpful?
> The only way to meet this desire for drivers is to release the specs and
> thus allow others to write their own drivers. This is what I tried to
> tell the managers here at Alcatel and found out that they had realised
> this already... the fact that i had already written the driver just
> speeded things up.
>
> For the Speed Touch USB, there will be a spec and a sample driver
> available soon. This should be more than enough to develop them for
> other OS'ses too.
>
> J.
Excellent news. Thanks a lot.
--
Jim Barber.
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