In article <cu1brmauhv3.fsf@nokia.com>, Darin Johnson
<darin_@_usa_._net> writes
>Chris Hills <chris@phaedsys.org> writes:
>
>> The problem is that neither Linux or FreeBSD == money :-(
>
>It does equal money, because the products get purchased!

However it is not *percived* as large quantity.

>Now maybe they think the potential market is too small to
>justify the cost of driver development, and that's understandable.
>But that doesn't mean they can't relese the specs for free.
>
>The people who use Linux, BSD, or other free OSs are _not_
>cheap spenders.

That is the perception. For every person who is prepared to spend money
you get 10 calls from people who want it free (or as good as)  there is
also the perception that the source has to go free.

I have seen several companise do commercial SW products  for Linux and
it has not gone well in terms of sales. 

>> Most commercial companies will see that market as a black hole and no
>> profits. They probably also think that the minute they get anywhere
>> Linux that their source code will end up on the internet.
>
>That's just silly.  If they're not selling the drivers, why should
>they care who sees the source code?  The source code is useless
>without the hardware to go with it, and in the vast majority of the
>cases has no significant ideas that another company could steal in
>order to gain a competitive advantage.

>If they don't want to let out source code, and don't want to create
>their own drivers, then they should just release some specs so that
>someone else can write their own drivers.

Now you have made the mistake of using common sence on this :-) The
perception is still that anything to do with Linux is open soure (or wil
get hacked) and no one makes any money. 

The HW people don't mind Linux it lowers the cost of using their
platform. However the Sw people don't like it. 

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills  Staffs  England    /\/\/\/\/\
/\/\/ chris@phaedsys.org       www.phaedsys.org \/\/
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

On Saturday, in article
     <zxzbc.19460$xW1.11138@bignews4.bellsouth.net>
     mike@mnmoran.org "Michael N. Moran" wrote:

>Paul E. Bennett wrote:
>> An alternative approach would be to ensure that their product was 
>> able to supply the device driver (byte coded) to a system running 
>> Open Firmware. That way, at boot time, the interfaced device could
>> just download it's driver to be compiled on the OF based system
>> no matter what OS was running over the top. I know there may be a 
>> few issues around loading drivers after the system is up and running
>> for the hot-plugable devices but that should be reasonably easy to fix.
>>  
>
>Open Firmware is fine for those systems that use it,
>however, there are a much wider range of systems that
>do not use it, especially in the embedded systems world.
>
>To the vendors I say, *please* just document the the USB
>interface to your device and make that available. I
>don't have a problem writing the driver, but without some
>high level information, all I can do is guess. In the
>case where I guess wrong, it makes both of us look bad
>to the user.

Most of the vendors (including several embededded vendors making USB devices)
are only interested in getting things to work on a supposed Microsoft
'standard'..

--
Paul Carpenter		| paul@pcserv.demon.co.uk
<http://www.pcserv.demon.co.uk/>        Main Site
<http://www.gnuh8.org.uk/>              GNU H8 & mailing list info.
<http://www.badweb.org.uk/>             For those web sites you hate.

Michael N. Moran <mike@mnmoran.org> says...

>Open Firmware is fine for those systems that use it,
>however, there are a much wider range of systems that
>do not use it, especially in the embedded systems world.
>
>To the vendors I say, *please* just document the the USB
>interface to your device and make that available. I
>don't have a problem writing the driver, but without some
>high level information, all I can do is guess. In the
>case where I guess wrong, it makes both of us look bad
>to the user.

I do a lot of embedded systems, and I never use any BIOS, open
or not.  I use an OS (Doesn't much matter which one - I have 
used Windows, Linux, BSD and FreeDOS on recent projects) to get 
my hand-coded assembly language program into memory, transfer 
control to it, and never release control of the computer until 
there is a reset.  If I can't find documentation for the 
interface to a device, I throw it away and buy something else.



-- 
Guy Macon, Electronics Engineer & Project Manager for hire. 
Remember Doc Brown from the _Back to the Future_ movies? Do you 
have an "impossible" engineering project that only someone like 
Doc Brown can solve?  My resume is at http://www.guymacon.com/

Paul E. Bennett wrote:
> An alternative approach would be to ensure that their product was 
> able to supply the device driver (byte coded) to a system running 
> Open Firmware. That way, at boot time, the interfaced device could
> just download it's driver to be compiled on the OF based system
> no matter what OS was running over the top. I know there may be a 
> few issues around loading drivers after the system is up and running
> for the hot-plugable devices but that should be reasonably easy to fix.
>  

Open Firmware is fine for those systems that use it,
however, there are a much wider range of systems that
do not use it, especially in the embedded systems world.

To the vendors I say, *please* just document the the USB
interface to your device and make that available. I
don't have a problem writing the driver, but without some
high level information, all I can do is guess. In the
case where I guess wrong, it makes both of us look bad
to the user.

-- 
Michael N. Moran           (h) 770 516 7918
5009 Old Field Ct.         (c) 678 521 5460
Kennesaw, GA, USA 30144    http://mnmoran.org

"... abstractions save us time working, but they don't
  save us time learning."
Joel Spolsky, The Law of Leaky Abstractions

The Beatles were wrong: 1 & 1 & 1 is 1

In article <20040403.1004.297768snz@pcserv.demon.co.uk>
           paul$@pcserv.demon.co.uk "Paul Carpenter" writes:

[%X]

All snipped points noted.

> >> If they don't want to let out source code, and don't want to create
> >> their own drivers, then they should just release some specs so that
> >> someone else can write their own drivers.
> >
> >An alternative approach would be to ensure that their product was 
> >able to supply the device driver (byte coded) to a system running 
> >Open Firmware. That way, at boot time, the interfaced device could
> >just download it's driver to be compiled on the OF based system
> >no matter what OS was running over the top. I know there may be a 
> >few issues around loading drivers after the system is up and running
> >for the hot-plugable devices but that should be reasonably easy to fix.
> 
> Any form of encryption (even byte coding) is reversable with enough time
> and effort. Remember you are talking about what in reality is low margin
> stack it high methods of sale, where the specs could change every three
> months.

If Open Firmware was a given on all systems (or something like it that 
was a flexible, extensible industry standard) then, provided they do
a decent enough job of providing the driver, there is no need for 
anyone to need to reverse engineer the byte code. As you say, the
reverse engineering is down to the cost of the time and effort put in.
Competitors may use different chipsets in their hardware so they would
be better off spending their energy in producing their own drivers 
anyway (rather than stealing others).

Open Firmware is already a published standard in IEEE1275 and runs on
Sun Workstations and many Power PC products. It can be made to run on
just about anything else as well.

-- 
********************************************************************
Paul E. Bennett ....................<email://peb@amleth.demon.co.uk>
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy .....<http://www.amleth.demon.co.uk/>
Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972 .........NOW AVAILABLE:- HIDECS COURSE......
Tel: +44 (0)1235-811095 .... see http://www.feabhas.com for details.
Going Forth Safely ..... EBA. www.electric-boat-association.org.uk..
********************************************************************

Paul Carpenter <paul$@pcserv.demon.co.uk> says...

>Any form of encryption (even byte coding) is reversible with 
>enough time and effort.

While this is true in the area we are discussing, in general it 
is false.  There is a form of encryption that cannot be decrypted
even with infinite time and infinite resources.  See
[ http://www.google.com/search?&q=%22Vernam+Algorithm%22 ].

The good news is that there is no way to use this method to protect
a com port driver from reverse engineering.


-- 
Guy Macon, Electronics Engineer & Project Manager for hire. 
Remember Doc Brown from the _Back to the Future_ movies? Do you 
have an "impossible" engineering project that only someone like 
Doc Brown can solve?  My resume is at http://www.guymacon.com/

On Saturday, in article <1080979389snz@amleth.demon.co.uk>
     peb@amleth.demon.co.uk "Paul E. Bennett" wrote:
>In article <cu1brmauhv3.fsf@nokia.com> darin_@_usa_._net "Darin Johnson" writes:
>> Chris Hills <chris@phaedsys.org> writes:
>> 
>> > The problem is that neither Linux or FreeBSD == money :-(
>> 
>> It does equal money, because the products get purchased!
>> Now maybe they think the potential market is too small to
>> justify the cost of driver development, and that's understandable.
>> But that doesn't mean they can't relese the specs for free.
>
>I'm with Darin on this. I'd also add that if everyone of us that use one 
>of the alternative OS's as a development platform would make it known at
>the shows then word will eventually filter back and they may get the 
>feeling that the market segment is growing sufficiently for them to start 
>taking an interest. So all of you who use an alternative OS (even briefly)
>go make it known.

Yes the more people who tell them they are losing potential sales will
eventually get through, however unless more than 10% at EACH event tell
them this, the drones will not pass it back. Most of the drones automatically
assume everybody is running the latest version of Windows on the latest
hardware.
 
>> The people who use Linux, BSD, or other free OSs are _not_
>> cheap spenders.
>
>Despite the inexpensiveness of the software product I suspect many of 
>us spend more money on getting decent dependable hardware to run it all
>on. I am currently planning the final consolidation of all of my 
>development tools on to one type of platform (which is having to be done 
>as a spare time activity). There is a vast quantity of data, old designs
>and archived material that has to be transferred in a manner that will
>ensure data integrity.

That can be a pain for products even under Windows, especially if you have to
support products for longer than five years, as often happens some parts still
need supporting when newer tools or the parts themselves are no longer around.

Still keep a working Windows for Workgroups to support some products for that
reason.

>> > Most commercial companies will see that market as a black hole and no
>> > profits. They probably also think that the minute they get anywhere
>> > Linux that their source code will end up on the internet.
>> 
>> That's just silly.  If they're not selling the drivers, why should
>> they care who sees the source code?  The source code is useless
>> without the hardware to go with it, and in the vast majority of the
>> cases has no significant ideas that another company could steal in
>> order to gain a competitive advantage.

Seeing the source code is historically a big no-no for many reasons, ranging
from the drones don't want to find out if it is possible, to being scared
that somebody might see what a kludge they have done.

Also they miss out on all the chance of getting you to agree to Software
License, registering on their web site, phoning home from their driver......
Let alone adding unneccessary pop up applications.

>Especially in the case where they are using, essentially, a common 
>interface standard. They may have variations in the protocol but
>by making the interface detail properly available they would actually 
>sell more product to a wider audience. So long as they produce decent
>dependable interface information someone like myself will not need to
>bother their tech support at all. Yes they should provide such info
>for free to promote wider sales.

See above on 'kludges'.
 
>> If they don't want to let out source code, and don't want to create
>> their own drivers, then they should just release some specs so that
>> someone else can write their own drivers.
>
>An alternative approach would be to ensure that their product was 
>able to supply the device driver (byte coded) to a system running 
>Open Firmware. That way, at boot time, the interfaced device could
>just download it's driver to be compiled on the OF based system
>no matter what OS was running over the top. I know there may be a 
>few issues around loading drivers after the system is up and running
>for the hot-plugable devices but that should be reasonably easy to fix.

Any form of encryption (even byte coding) is reversable with enough time
and effort. Remember you are talking about what in reality is low margin
stack it high methods of sale, where the specs could change every three
months.

-- 
Paul Carpenter		| paul@pcserv.demon.co.uk
<http://www.pcserv.demon.co.uk/>        Main Site
<http://www.gnuh8.org.uk/>              GNU H8 & mailing list info.
<http://www.badweb.org.uk/>             For those web sites you hate.

In article <cu1brmauhv3.fsf@nokia.com> darin_@_usa_._net "Darin Johnson" writes:

> Chris Hills <chris@phaedsys.org> writes:
> 
> > The problem is that neither Linux or FreeBSD == money :-(
> 
> It does equal money, because the products get purchased!
> Now maybe they think the potential market is too small to
> justify the cost of driver development, and that's understandable.
> But that doesn't mean they can't relese the specs for free.

I'm with Darin on this. I'd also add that if everyone of us that use one 
of the alternative OS's as a development platform would make it known at
the shows then word will eventually filter back and they may get the 
feeling that the market segment is growing sufficiently for them to start 
taking an interest. So all of you who use an alternative OS (even briefly)
go make it known.

> The people who use Linux, BSD, or other free OSs are _not_
> cheap spenders.

Despite the inexpensiveness of the software product I suspect many of 
us spend more money on getting decent dependable hardware to run it all
on. I am currently planning the final consolidation of all of my 
development tools on to one type of platform (which is having to be done 
as a spare time activity). There is a vast quantity of data, old designs
and archived material that has to be transferred in a manner that will
ensure data integrity.

> > Most commercial companies will see that market as a black hole and no
> > profits. They probably also think that the minute they get anywhere
> > Linux that their source code will end up on the internet.
> 
> That's just silly.  If they're not selling the drivers, why should
> they care who sees the source code?  The source code is useless
> without the hardware to go with it, and in the vast majority of the
> cases has no significant ideas that another company could steal in
> order to gain a competitive advantage.

Especially in the case where they are using, essentially, a common 
interface standard. They may have variations in the protocol but
by making the interface detail properly available they would actually 
sell more product to a wider audience. So long as they produce decent
dependable interface information someone like myself will not need to
bother their tech support at all. Yes they should provide such info
for free to promote wider sales.

> If they don't want to let out source code, and don't want to create
> their own drivers, then they should just release some specs so that
> someone else can write their own drivers.

An alternative approach would be to ensure that their product was 
able to supply the device driver (byte coded) to a system running 
Open Firmware. That way, at boot time, the interfaced device could
just download it's driver to be compiled on the OF based system
no matter what OS was running over the top. I know there may be a 
few issues around loading drivers after the system is up and running
for the hot-plugable devices but that should be reasonably easy to fix.

-- 
********************************************************************
Paul E. Bennett ....................<email://peb@amleth.demon.co.uk>
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy .....<http://www.amleth.demon.co.uk/>
Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972 .........NOW AVAILABLE:- HIDECS COURSE......
Tel: +44 (0)1235-811095 .... see http://www.feabhas.com for details.
Going Forth Safely ..... EBA. www.electric-boat-association.org.uk..
********************************************************************

Chris Hills <chris@phaedsys.org> writes:

> The problem is that neither Linux or FreeBSD == money :-(

It does equal money, because the products get purchased!
Now maybe they think the potential market is too small to
justify the cost of driver development, and that's understandable.
But that doesn't mean they can't relese the specs for free.

The people who use Linux, BSD, or other free OSs are _not_
cheap spenders.

> Most commercial companies will see that market as a black hole and no
> profits. They probably also think that the minute they get anywhere
> Linux that their source code will end up on the internet.

That's just silly.  If they're not selling the drivers, why should
they care who sees the source code?  The source code is useless
without the hardware to go with it, and in the vast majority of the
cases has no significant ideas that another company could steal in
order to gain a competitive advantage.

If they don't want to let out source code, and don't want to create
their own drivers, then they should just release some specs so that
someone else can write their own drivers.

-- 
Darin Johnson
    Gravity is a harsh mistress -- The Tick