> > mmmh ... you've got a point ... you just opened my eyes ... documentation is 
> > pointless when I have a blackbox doing the work.
> 
> Maybe I'm missing something, and if so, I do apologize to those on these 
> lists that I may have offended ... but ... having clean source code to a 
> driver is not equal to a black box ... is it?  I don't believe I've once 
> advocatged 'binary drivers' ...

Approximately six years ago Intel gave the *BSD projects a driver
for the Intel gigabit cards, the so-called em(4) driver.

They refused to give documentation to the developers then, and they
still refuse to give documentation to the developers today (A few
people have documentation, but these are rare individuals, typically
operating in some sort of support role with a large customer of Intel).

That driver was garbage then.  Today, six years later and 146 revisions
later (in OpenBSD) that driver is still largely terrible.

We know why it is terrible.  The hardware is not that great.

We know one reason why we never got documentation.  Bit by bit more
information has come out to show that the hardware design is an
embarrasment and there are countless bugs and shortcomings.

Marc, you cannot program, which is why you will never understand.

You should just drop this entire discussion because you are completely
wrong.

In fact, it is bleating from people like you that, over the years, has
let the vendors off the hook when they refuse to supply documentation.

OpenBSD people ask vendors for documentation, and FreeBSD people
attack us, and the vendor goes "phew, we can get away with not giving
them any documentation".

Don't just blame (some) Linux developers for signing NDA's.  A lot of
that also happened in the particular BSD community who you are
associated with.

And when that guy who signed the NDA (Hi Scott, Hi others) stops
giving caring (like the vendors), the driver dies.

You all know this is true.  You've all seen it happen countless times.

And you know there is a better way.