Date: Tue, 14 Nov 1995 22:05:10 -0800 From: "Justin T. Gibbs" <gibbs@freefall.freebsd.org> To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> Cc: davidg@root.com, hsu@cs.hut.fi, current@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: ISP state their FreeBSD concerns Message-ID: <199511150605.WAA19028@freefall.freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 14 Nov 1995 14:21:42 MST." <199511142121.OAA22117@phaeton.artisoft.com>
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>On the contrary. If I were a competitor, I'd have their code torn apart >withing one week of each new release. > >The code is useless without an AIC 7770, which you can only buy from >Adaptec. This just isn't true. You act like you've read the code (in FreeBSD), know how it works, what it does and its scope, but the more you say, the more obvious it becomes that none of the above is true. To get the information that I'm talking about out of Adaptec's drivers, you would have to write a disassebler for aic7xxx code, figure out what portion of the driver is the sequecner code, then disasemble the x86 kernel code, then figure out what portion of the x86 code is the HIM (Hardware Interface Module), then understand the HIM, the sequencer code, the aic7xxx and how they interract. This would tell you exactly how Adaptec responds to all SCSI phases, messages, and errors including all of their work arounds. The end result is hardware independant data that gives Adaptec a competitive edge. Extracting the information from a binary is much harder than looking through a well documented piece of source code. >The 1742 argument of "we don't want people building rip-offs of our >boards and leveraging drivers for our cards to sell their cards instead" >only holds water if you can legally use the download code without >violating copyright in a competitors card. They don't need to use Adaptec's code. They can use the information in any design they want. Again is *hardware independant* information. >This has more to do with publication terms and support of developers >asking questions than it has to do with them actually having anything >of proprietary value that can't be gotten legally or illegally without >non-disclosure. What does it have to do with "publication terms"? As I've said in the past they give you all the information you need to program the cards except for their implementation. They're not hiding anything about there hardware. >The "barrier" to competitors is a small one -- much smaller than the >investment of the time to decypher their download code. I think it would take you a couple man months to fully decifer the HIM and sequencer code. Either is little good without the other for the type of information I'm talking about since the API they communicate with is defined by the downloaded code, not the hardware. >It's the download interface itself which is proprietary -- I don't know The download interface is "rep outsb" and is not proprietary at all. The code you download is. >about you, but all the AIC7770 based boards I've seen come with Xenix >drivers with the sequencer code download image. If you really think that its that easy, I'd love to get the information from you. Let me know when you have Adaptec's HIM and their sequencer code all worked out. > Terry Lambert > terry@lambert.org >--- >Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present >or previous employers. -- Justin T. Gibbs =========================================== FreeBSD: Turning PCs into workstations ===========================================
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