[3250] in linux-net channel archive
Re: Bug in 1.2.13 firewall?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David C Niemi)
Mon Jun 17 01:21:47 1996
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 00:15:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: David C Niemi <niemi@wauug.erols.com>
To: dennis <dennis@etinc.com>
cc: linux-net@vger.rutgers.edu
In-Reply-To: <199606161634.MAA29332@etinc.com>
On Sun, 16 Jun 1996, dennis wrote:
...
> The idea that a commercial vendor would invest corporate resources
> in a value-added software driver and give away source so that their
> competitors could use it is simply not practical. Perhaps for a bare
> bones or highly board-specific driver...but most of the "value-added"
> features that make our product attractive are portable to other products.
> So what you're saying is that you only want raw board drivers, and you
> guys want to write the frame relay and do all the value-added stuff
> yourselves. The result of that is that the entire community has to wait
> much longer for the features, and they are stuck with a single set of
> features for the entire O/S.
There is another possibility, which may be a good idea licensing issues
aside. Write a generic minimal kernel driver for your card, and do all
the really neat proprietary stuff in user mode. This can insulate most of
your code from the vagaries of kernel changes, and in fact most likely
from the differences between several UN*X-ish OSes as well. Whether this
makes any sense for your driver, you be the judge, but it is often a good
idea.
> America thrives on competition (and I recognize that you're not from here),
> and there isn't enough difference between decent hardware to get
> people to buy your product without a price war. If we made source available,
> the first thing that would happen is that someone would port
> the features to a less expensive board. So then we have to drop our
> prices (which you THINK is a good thing), cut back on support and then
> we stop doing new development for LINUX and start concentrating
> on NT or something where we can make better margins. The effect
> is that the LINUX community loses.
If most of your added value is in your software, of course you have to
worry about this. But running to NT does not help if there are
lower-priced cards out there; you will doubtless have competition wherever
you go. If you are saying that your hardware is inherently more expensive
than other hardware that does the same thing, I think you are in trouble
regardless...
> Another ramification of the "source" distribution is that it becomes
> impossible
> to support software that has been ported by a user. We are commited to
> support the product, but if all of our users are running different versions of
> our software (even if its just recompiled) it damages the entire process.
I think that is an unnecessarily extreme attitude. Just because you make
source available does not mean that you cannot make an "official" binary
version available for a couple of key "stable" kernels. If someone
reports unusual problems, ask them to try an "official" version before you
spend any effort on it (or even state that any unofficial versions are
unsupported, if it is so much of a problem).
> The best one that I heard was the "let 'em put it in E-PROM". Tell me,
> why is that acceptable? You want to pay $100 shipping and handling
> every time there's an upgrade, or do you want to download from an
> ftp site? Another thoughtful quote from the peanut gallery.
A joke, I hope.
---
There are undoubtedly some people who will take the spirit of free
software so far as to hurt their own cause. I hope you are not too
annoyed to continue supporting Linux, whether with binaries or source.
While a source distribution is more convenient for those running at newer
kernel revs, or those able to do their own kernel debugging, I think that
distinction will be a bit less painful for a few months now that 2.0 is
out and you support it.
With a little reflection the more zealous Linux boosters should also
realize that vendor support for Linux is far more important at this point
than quibbles over how that support is achieved. Linux is still a little
fish, and the Linux community cannot afford to scare away commercial
support or fragment the community with infighting, or it cannot continue
to grow. In fact it is an emphasis on code that works over ego and
politics which has let Linux come this far this fast.
Cheers,
David
Niemi@wauug.erols.com 703-810-5538 Reston, Virginia, USA
------ Money talks, but it is wrong half of the time. -----
