From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Mar 19 22:15:48 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5B0F916A4CF for ; Sat, 19 Mar 2005 22:15:48 +0000 (GMT) Received: from bofh.cns.ualberta.ca (bofh.cns.ualberta.ca [129.128.11.10]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with SMTP id E525E43D1D for ; Sat, 19 Mar 2005 22:15:47 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from beck@bofh.cns.ualberta.ca) Received: (qmail 30456 invoked by uid 12187); 19 Mar 2005 22:15:47 -0000 Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 15:15:47 -0700 From: Bob Beck To: Scott Long Message-ID: <20050319221547.GN22961@bofh.cns.ualberta.ca> Mail-Followup-To: Scott Long , todd@fries.net, Theo de Raadt , Sean Hafeez , misc@openbsd.org, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <200503191743.j2JHhW1u024795@cvs.openbsd.org> <423C7EB1.9060704@samsco.org> <1111264576.25785.10.camel@blue.fries.net> <423C8E58.60605@samsco.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <423C8E58.60605@samsco.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6i cc: misc@openbsd.org cc: Sean Hafeez cc: todd@fries.net cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org cc: Theo de Raadt Subject: Re: Adaptec AAC raid support X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 22:15:48 -0000 > I'm not stuffing anything down anyone's throats. I'm enabling FreeBSD > users to use the resources that are available to them. That's quite > different than cancelling developer work and threatening to remove a > driver due to a political dispute. Freedom isn't about coercing others > to believe the same things that I believe. Actually Scott, there's exactly the problem. While I'm sure you think that providing a binary only management tool helps FreeBSD users who have this hardware, I think it's rather the opposite. Let me put it in another light: Let's say an ethernet card vendor closes off and puts under NDA the interface to their card's control mechanisms. you can have a free driver to recieve and send packets, but in order to set an address, or configure the card, you can't use ifconfig, you have to use a proprietary binary only program that can't be included with the OS, and doesn't work on anything but i386. Would having support in there for that particular ethernet card, and encouraging users to buy more of them really be helping FreeBSD users in the long run, or hurting them? Or perhaps it would it be helping the vendor's lawyers to have ammunition to keep documentation from being released, and hurting the user community in the long run. -Bob