Dear Mr. Majid Awad, Today I got again a very disappointing information about your Company (INTEL). In fact Theo de Raadt pointed out that there are still issues related to firmware licenses or documentation.
You can read about his statement here: http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20060930232710&mode=expanded I just wanna inform you that I don`t buy nor recomment nor use ANY Intel-Hardware because of that reason. I`m using an AMD since the Athlon-Model. Later I used a P3 (up to 1Ghz) but I was disappointed with the support of the OpenSource OSs at this time (It was a intel motherboard with chipset too). Since that I`m using and buying AMD and VIA Chipsets. But that`s not the point here (because this could change if your company changes and does care for the problems we (as users and customers do have)). As I worked in the university and as we had to decide what CPUs we`ll use for the whole computer-center we choosed to buy AMDs because AMD does support developers with documentations and the stuff they do need. Please don4t get me wrong. It`s not that I do hate Intel in any way. At the university we`ve used FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Plan9 (and some other more unknown OSs). Some pc pools had to provide serval OSs to the students and that was exactly the reason to NOT buy Intel. Also I don4t recomment anybody your WLAN-Chips. It`s not a matter of the price. They simply just don4t work. Well that`s also not right. The drivers does work but your license for the firmware prohebits the distribution. I can tell you personaly that my friends wont register here and there and give all their personal data to a US company which don`t care for the EU/Germany Privacy laws. That`s the simple truth. I recommend RALink Chipsets because they simply do work out of the Box. Also as I worked at the university I`ve never recomended your WLAN-Cards because we had students who study also computer science and those peoples needed to run a LOT different OSs and not just Windows or Linux. I do understand that you can`t support every OS out there so let me point out some advantages if you would simply give ALL required Docs and Firmware away for free. 1) Driver development does cost money - OpenSource Developers develop for FREE and you can make ads wich claim that YOUR hardware is broadly supported! 2) Driver development can bring negativ News to your company - Wasn`t your company also involved into some BlackHat Hacks? It was the fault of YOUR developers and YOU did paid them and they did made a misstake wich brang some negativ news up to YOUR company and brang customers ind ager wich paid already for YOUR products. So in fact you made a lot of loss there (and not just the reputation!)! If a OpenSource Developer would code lousy nobody would ever start to blame YOU (but they would blame that OpenSource Developer). 3) Saving Money for your company - If those free developers do the work for free you don4t even have to pay them. Sounds logical, or? 4) Positiv company image! - If you provide ALL stuff needed those developers ask for you get a POSITIV image. You don`t get a positiv company image during spreading lies... That are 4 good reasons why to support OpenSource Developers! Let me tell you somethign about myself: I`m using AMDs with VIA-Chipsets because they`re supported. I`ve 4 PCs and 1 Notebook and all of them, except one, do run OpenBSD (a OS not "activly" supported by your company!). A friend of me got a Notebook with internal WLAN (INTEL) and I told him to replace it. Another is buying a mini-PCI-WLAN Card because of the same reason (from another vendor of course! There wa sno mini-PCI WLAN included into his notebook). Soon I`ll buy a new notebook and I`m not sure if it will include anything from Intel! And my decission does belong to the behavior of your company! I am the customer, I do pay for YOUR hardware and I wnana use my Hardware with ANY OS no matter if you dislike, hate or even love it. Imagine you would buy a Ford and this Ford offers some cool stuff like it can drive longer with the same amount of Full. But then you imagine you can just get the gas needed for that Ford on some special Gas-Stations and none of those is the Gas-Station you prefere or like. I hope you get my point. I`m justa customer but there many peoples outside like me. Tousends of peoples... if not even more. Kind regards from Germany, Sebastian Rother p.s. I do like the Chipdesign of your Core Duo2 CPUs but I`ll propably never use them.
