From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Feb 11 21: 2:47 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2D49237B401 for ; Tue, 11 Feb 2003 21:02:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from pool-151-201-19-185.pitt.east.verizon.net (pool-151-201-19-185.pitt.east.verizon.net [151.201.19.185]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6685A43F75 for ; Tue, 11 Feb 2003 21:02:45 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from dacut@kanga.org) Received: from kanga.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pool-151-201-19-185.pitt.east.verizon.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 78DB210C3F5 for ; Wed, 12 Feb 2003 00:07:18 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <3E49D686.1030806@kanga.org> Date: Wed, 12 Feb 2003 00:07:18 -0500 From: David Cuthbert User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021212 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Another EPIA M 9000 update (was Re: More compartive power/performance results (was Re: Lower power SMP boxes?)) References: <20030210120212.G47233-100000@clubfoot.cracktown.com> <200302102042.h1AKghcu023195@apollo.backplane.com> <20030211100325.GA2570@HAL9000.homeunix.com> In-Reply-To: <20030211100325.GA2570@HAL9000.homeunix.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG David Schultz wrote: > Thus spake Matthew Dillon : >> I don't understand why these companies don't just >> include sources for their X drivers, it would make life so much easier. > Usually it's because they (wrongly) think it will protect their > trade secrets from competitors. That's part of it. I don't know what my competitors know, but if they don't know the algorithms we're using, we're not going to make it easy to find out. If they do know, we're not going to make it easy to verify what they do know. (But if they know that we don't know what they do know... yeah, you know the drill. :-) The other bit is that it can expose some glaring hardware kludges and actual design and implementation errors which can be embarrassing. To an engineer, this is just routine stuff. To a suit, this seems like a death knell. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message