At 07:46 PM 10/26/98 -0500, you wrote:
>[ 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?

I guess the problem with the "free" camps has always been that they think that
anyone can write a driver and that hardware is hardware and a driver is a
driver.
You also seem to think that the object is just to "make sales", which
is rather amatuerish as well. We have no interest in supplying general purpose
hardware at bargain basement products to anyone with a VISA card. We
sell a value added, full-featured product suitable for production
environments.

I think I've learned what I need to from this discussion. Maybe some day
you'll
understand that its beneficial for you to support 3rd party vendors,
including 
object only, because it ads capability to your OS, rather than harping on the
source issue.

Dennis