2006/6/13, Hank Cohen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Folks,
There has been some discussion of late on this list about Hifn's policy
with respect to releasing documentation to the general public. That
discussion lead to a great deal of uninformed speculation and
unflattering statement's about Hifn's unfriendliness towards the open
source community. I would like to set the record straight.
For me it goes like this.
I use OpenBSD because it is stable and secure and well documented. I
don't need to register to read the wonderful man page and know how it
work and what's supported or not.
Adaptec got substantial sale drop last year and don't take my word for
it. Just look at the public results they need to release for the stock
market. They don't respect their possible users to make the
documentations available to great developers to make sure their hardware
works well on my OS of choice that is NOT Microsoft thank you!
The results, simple, I have no more Adaptec what so ever in my business,
NONE and trust me, I do have plenty of servers. See I have the choice
like may here to buy of recommend hardware we see as good and well
supported. I wouldn't recommend to any of my customers any hardware that
is not working properly because a company do not see the light and
restrict my choice by not allowing their chips to be well supported, so
I go else where to get what I need and yes, I do look at specs and buy
what I see as good and supported for me.
Hifn's is not on my list and join the same dead beat, not look at list
as Adaptec did.
See, it's great out there, we have choice to pick what we want to use
and my choice is to pick well supported hardware by MY OS of choice and
the well supported come to no price to you what so ever, other then
providing a place to download documentation to write good drivers for
your hardware.
You don't even have to write the code, even the cost of distributing
your well written drive ( if it even come to that) is not even yours!
So, I will return that to you and say, yes, "That discussion lead to a
great deal of uninformed speculation..." you try to tell people that you
respect their choice and you think they are allow to make their own
choice. I guess not.
Just learn from other mistakes and wins. Hardware buy goes to well open
hardware makers and looks like most of them are not from the US these
days, but they do see me as a valuable customers and they do want me to
have well working servers as they make sure their product is well
supported on my choice of hardware, not by writing BLOB, but by
providing documentations and let the one that know best how to support
their hardware do it on my OS of choice!
Do you understand what I am saying and trying to make you understand!?
And the bottom line is simple.
If Theo said "I don't TRUST you to keep my personal data private.", nor
do I. And as express to you, "We are not your customers. YOU ARE OUR
CUSTOMER.". So may be it's time you understand this and bring it up the
food chain in your business too!
Also, "And if you continue baiting me, I will delete the driver from our
source tree.", I wouldn't push it really. He did remove Adaptec from
OpenBSD last year and that was great as I didn't even have to question
if it was working well or not. It wasn't there, so no time waisting to
even try!
So, you want sales, just make the documentation !!!FREELY!!! available
and you would be surprise of what it does, plus you really have nothing
to loose! It doesn't cost you anything!
So, instead of hiring many more sales guys, or even PR guys to preach
the good of Hifn, let us do it fro you! How, well simple...
Open the documentation and then watch the list where everyone ready it
and see your chips working well on OpenBSD and then working well on ALL
other project over time!
I think you forget the most important things here. All Open Source
project do exchange with each other, some more then others, but they all
know what they other is doing!
Do the right thing and see everyone looks favorably to you in the end!
ISn't it what you spend lots of money in marketing to have users look
favorably to your chips so they use them?
Plus see this as an improvement, you increase your sales and you reduce
your costs!
Yes you do. No more needs to have servers keeping all that private
informations, and people looks at it and some more classifying it, and
some more communicating it to others, etc.
See, in the end, that increase your profit from day one!
Don't you like it?
Best,
Daniel
PS: I wish you the best in your future, what ever your choice might be.
Your call if that's going to be UP or DOWN.
