On Wed, Nov 03, 1999 at 09:41:25PM +0100, Frank van der Linden wrote:
> Some of the mails here about Adaptec (inadvertently) suggest that
> they seem to be intentionally giving NetBSD a hard time. I do
> not believe that this is the case. I would like to clear up
> some things:
> 
> 	* "other BSD developers have been asked not to share docs
> 	   with us". That's not really true; the not-sharing part
> 	   was based on someone's interpretation of an agreement
> 	   that people needed to sign for the docs. I haven't
> 	   seen this agreement, I do not know if it is true,
> 	   or that this is just a misunderstanding.

I want to apologize if I've caused confusion on this point.  I believe I
misinterpreted things I heard from other NetBSD developers and spoke too
forcefully.

> 	* Adaptec did not "refuse" to do some of the things that
> 	  were mentioned. It's just that there has been no response
> 	  on some points. I do not know the reasons for this.

I have to say that I see 18+ months of "no response" while response is
given to others who are not, perhaps, so polite and friendly, as functionally
equivalent to "refusal".  How else is there to see it, really?

> I'm sorry that some of the details of the attempts (the ones that
> I am involved in, anyway) were posted to this public list; this
> is not how things should be done and was unintentional.

I apologize if I disclosed any details which weren't appropriate to
discuss on this list; none of the people who I discussed this made it
clear to me that the state of our efforts to obtain documentation from
Adaptec should be handled with more delicacy but in retrospect perhaps
I should have seen this for myself.  The embarassing lack of drivers
for any modern Adaptec SCSI HBA product is a very frustrating situation
and it's difficult to stonewall users indefinitely, as I'm sure you're
quite aware yourself!  I'll exercise more discretion in the future.

> I still think that mailspamming is very wrong. Of course, if
> individual people want to express their desire for NetBSD
> support as Adaptec customers to Adaptec, in a polite way,
> then they have every right to do so.

That is _precisely_ my position.  I don't think mailbombing people at
Adaptec is going to get any useful result.  On the other hand, politely
asking Adaptec to help resolve the current situation is probably a good
thing.

-- 
Thor Lancelot Simon	                                      tls@rek.tjls.com
	"And where do all these highways go, now that we are free?"