Quoting Rasputin (rasputnik@hellooperator.net):

> Is it a licensing thing, complexity of the interface, or what?
> Not a moan, I'm curious as much as anything...

Even if you get the license right, and your programmer is sane enough 
to program the stuff without too many errors you still face the 
specification problem. When the implementation of the hardware needs to
be done most people look at windows only, and when it works there, it
is ok. This means that sometimes the hardware specfication does not
match the hardware in question.

Furthermore there are standards which get deliberately broken in order
to cut down on implementation time. For said windows boxen this does
not pose a problem, since it is the ''de facto'' standard, but it 
means for free operating systems that it is hard, if not impossible,
to get things right.

Some systems can be reverse engineered without the knowledge of the
specification. Others are next to impossible. I believe it is one of
these problems the developers are faced with.

-- 
j.