I think this thread is starting to go no where.  Therefore I think we
should return focus on NetBSD issues.

If Dennis wishes to support NetBSD, that would be great.  Maybe he'll have
some satisfied NetBSD users with his cards/software and make some money
at the same time. I was interested in his card way back when, but have
settled for other solutions. I think Dennis has his own ideas and
philosophies about business, hardware and software, support,
documentation, etc.  But they are his and no one is going to change that.
If you want to go back and search inet-access and freebsd-isp's mailing
lists regarding etinc and Dennis, then it's only a few clicks away.  There
you'll find several "heated" discussions about etinc/Dennis, and none of
those discussions provided any productive results - IMHO.

To be fair to Dennis, those that I know who did get etinc's cards to work
are pretty happy with the product, but all have said Etinc/Dennis should
provide for better support and documentation with less attitude.  You
could easily verify this by talking to those that actually use Etinc's
cards.

So let's conclude this thread.  If Dennis wishes to port his products to
NetBSD, cool without releasing full or partial source, fine.  If he
doesn't want to go NetBSD at all, fine.

Oh, and that spin off about FreeBSD/alpha... what's the point of having
open source if our ego get bruised alittle when others based their OS on
our port?  Who cares, that's the point of open source isn't it.  But to be
fair, who ever brought it up should have given some credit to the use of
NetBSD base codes, but I think he was only trying to say that it does work
(ie. correcting someone else on the NetBSD list saying otherwise).

So one more time, please stop this thread as it doesn't provide me with
anything usefull.

..............          ....................................
Thomas T. Thai          Infomedia Interactive Communications
tom@iic.net             TEL 612.376.9090 * FAX 612.376.9087


On Tue, 27 Oct 1998, David Maxwell wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 27, 1998 at 12:48:02PM -0500, Dennis wrote:
> > 
> > But they can, because they can use FreeBSD, which fits your
> > description, at least in the i386 world which is all that matters to us.
> 
> What are the reasons that only i386 matters to you?
> 
> I feel many people choose NetBSD on i386 to give them the
> flexibility of changing the hardware layer out for a higher
> performance system without loosing everything else. People
> who are willing to lock themselves into i386s may be just
> fine with your cards, but I know the machine-dependence
> of the card would lower it in my favour. Not eliminate it
> perhaps, but lower it. (for me)
> 
> > Clearly your words indicate that you are not interested in having a widely 
> > popular OS, which certainly is a major criteria for a vendor.
> 
> See my previous message regarding "clearly" and "you".
> 
> -- 
> David Maxwell, david@vex.net|david@maxwell.net --> Mastery of UNIX, like
> mastery of language, offers real freedom. The price of freedom is always dear,
> but there's no substitute. Personally, I'd rather pay for my freedom than live
> in a bitmapped, pop-up-happy dungeon like NT. - Thomas Scoville 
>