[ On Mon, October 26, 1998 at 18:42:05 (-0500), Dennis wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: T3/T1 cards - interest 
>
> At 09:29 AM 10/26/98 -0500, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> >
> >One note: if you made the source to your drivers public, it is likely
> >that the NetBSD crowd would simply maintain the drivers in -current
> >for you. Given that you are a hardware vendor and make your money on
> >selling the cards...
> 
> Its also likely someone would port them to cheaper cards. 

... and the problem with that is????

I mean: "what *exactly* are you selling?"

If you're selling hardware then the driver is merely a feature and/or a
cookie that attracts the end user.  Providing full documentation with
your hardware would be an equivalent cookie, though perhaps not quite so
plug&play.

If you're selling software then maybe you're of the mind that the
hardware is merely something that makes your software work, in which
case why aren't you supporting those "cheaper cards" too and offering
your own hardware simply as an add-on?

If you're trying to sell both, well then you'll have to decide on your
own what operating systems to support and how to do this.  You're
obviously not going to be able to beneift from the open source
development model, and you're not likely going to make any extra sales
to folks who want to write their own drivers or use third party drivers.
In that case you'd best directly ask your customers and potential
customers what versions of any given operating system they'd like to use
your hardware&software with.  I know several folks who were forced to
choose their operating system because they needed to use your hardware
and their first choice OS wasn't on your supported list.  If there'd
have been a North-American-made alternative that either came with open
source drivers or full hardare docs or even support for their first
choice OS then they would not have bought your cards.

> Its chatter like this that drives vendors away from "Free" unices, you know. 
> Its the driver that makes the card, not the other way around.

Well, that depends.  I guess you might be right in the PC world, but in
all the rest of the hardware universe it's the documentation that makes
the card.  Anyone with decent documentation will be able to write a
decent driver for their favourite OS.  Anyone with decent documentation
*and* openly available driver source code will be able to charge a small
premium for their hardware regardless of how superior it may, or may
not, be (especially if the documentation and driver quality lives up to
the same level of expectation  one might have for the hardware).

Sounds to me like you guys are simply trying to extract the maximum
amount of profit from each sale of your product instead of trying simply
to maximise the profit on total sales.  There's a big difference there,
especially when you're poking your nose into mass markets, such as the
PC market.

If your hardware really isn't any better than cheaper cards then you're
only holding your buyers ransom with proprietary drivers and lack of
documentation.  Now I've actually used your hardware, and under
non-disclosure I've even hacked on your drivers, and I don't actually
believe that there's anything wrong with the quality of your hardware or
your drivers (though your documentation at the time left a bit to be
desired).

I don't think your hardare really belongs in the realm of ordingary PC
hardware, and I don't think you should try to treat it that way.

Attitudes like yours are what drive some of us free unix users away from
hardware such as yours.  If we *really* need your hardware because it's
unique then we'll just reverse engineer it far enough to build our own
drivers anyway.  The linux guys have certainly proved capable of doing
this, not to mention almost everyone who supports any not-so-compatible
motherboard.

You really shouldn't give a hoot what OS your users use, or even what
language they use to write drivers in, etc.  If you're really in the
hardware business then you should provide sufficient engineering
documentation and support to enable your users to use your hardware, the
more the better.  Period.  In fact if you're sure enough about your
hardware engineering skills and your ability to protect your designs
under the copyright law you should even be providing full hardware
engineering documentation including theory of operation documents, just
like all real hardware vendors did back in the good old days when
engineers ate users for breakfast, dinner, supper, and snacks!  ;-)

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
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