Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 09:12:10 -0700 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Doug Hass" <dhass@imagestream.com> Cc: "Leo Bicknell" <bicknell@ufp.org>, "Jim Bryant" <kc5vdj@yahoo.com>, "MurrayTaylor" <taylorm@bytecraft.au.com>, <freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>, <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: FYI Message-ID: <009301c15726$797d19a0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.3.96.1011017085406.14720A-100000@ims1.imagestream.com>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >[mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Doug Hass >Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2001 7:05 AM >To: Ted Mittelstaedt >Cc: Leo Bicknell; Jim Bryant; MurrayTaylor; freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG; >freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: RE: FYI > > >We knew that the driver had undergone some maintainence. It still has >bugs, and doesn't take advantage of the later code advances in the >development kit, but if it works well enough for you, then that's not an >issue. If you don't want to improve the driver beyond where it is now, >that's definitely up to you. You know that improvements and bug fixes >exist if you ever decide they are affect your use of the card enough to >put them in place. > >> What we don't have is a solution for the 5xx and later cards. But I think >> that there would be even more interest on a DS3 card like the WANic 8xx > >Development tools for the later cards have been freely available (under >NDA) for 5 years now. No one is holding anyone in the FreeBSD community >back. > Doug, in the entire history of the FreeBSD project, when given a choice between a better driver or code that is closed source, and a worse driver that has open source, the FreeBSD community has never chosen the driver or code with closed source. In fact I can only remember ONCE that the Project has recommended against freely available BSD code - and they did so in favor of GPL code, not closed source code - and this was for the coprocessor emulator (used for 386 and 486SX chips only) If you never keep anything else in mind about FreeBSD, then keep this one thing. FreeBSD is not about closed source. It's about freely available BSD source that is more free even than GPL. If any of the WANic 4xx driver authors had ever signed an NDA or looked at the NDA'd Imagestream code, they could never have touched the BSD driver ever again, without risk of contaminating the open source driver code. We take things like this very seriously. The only time that FreeBSD gets involved in closed-source code is when there is simply NO other alternative - like in this case where the register interface specs are being withheld. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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