On Mon, 24 Nov 1997, Frank van der Linden wrote:

>On Sun, Nov 23, 1997 at 02:02:36PM -0800, Gerald C. Simmons wrote:
>
>> > As for floppy tape support, I too think it is crap, and will stick to
>> > my 4mm DAT changer.  However, I see the desire for others to use what
>> > they have on hand, too.
>> > 
>> > --Michael
>> > 
>> 
>> Here's the CRAP thing again! Don't you see how destructive to the NetBSD
>> project this kind of an attitude is?
>
>I think you're overreacting here.. Michael is in fact saying: "No matter
>what I think of this particular kind of hardware, I see that it should
>be supported".
>
>It's ok for people to have the opinion that a kind of hardware is 'crap',
>but it should not be used as a reason to not support it, that's clear.
>And he's not doing that.
>
>I agree with your sentiments with regard to the fist reaction: saying
>"That piece of hardware sucks, so we should not support it" is very wrong.
>
>To come back to the original point: it's not supported currently. Whether
>it will be in the future depends on if someone will have the 1) time,
>2) hardware, and 3) knowledge to write (or port) support for it. To
>fulfill all 3 of those conditions is unfortunately a problem a lot
>of the time.. Since Michael says he has 3), and hopefully has 1),
>maybe someone could provide him with 2)?
>
>- Frank

Seems to me that the crux of the argument is that generally those
people who have the skill to write a driver and/or reverse engineer
how a piece of hardware works know which hardware is crap and stay
away from it.  It is unreasonable to expect these people to buy
crappy hardware just so they can write a driver for the hardware
which they probably won't even use once they finish cause it's crappy.
The folks who write drivers for this project already put in enough time
we can't also expect them to buy hardware they don't want/like just
so they can write a driver for someone else.

---------
Christopher R. Bowman
crb@Glue.umd.edu
My home page