Jeff Garzik wrote:
> FWIW, -every single- Windows driver source code I've seen has been
> bloody awful. Asking them to release that code would probably result in
> embarrassment.
Maybe a good analogy is that drivers are to hardware companies like
excrements are to living creatures: in order to stay alive, they have
to produce them, but you don't put much love into their production,
and their internals (like their development) may be a little
disgusting.
> Same reasoning why many companies won't release hardware
> specifications... The internal docs are bad. Really bad.
A fair number of hardware documents I have came with "here's all the
material you'll need, but please don't show this to anyone" (but no
NDA), which is fine with me: it doesn't complicate development in any
way, and in those few cases where I really needed to share a document,
they were flexible enough to allow this.
Of course, it's better if documentation is entirely in the public too,
but considering the typical overhead of clearing a document for public
release, I can understand why companies frequently don't do it.
- Werner
--
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/ Werner Almesberger, ICA, EPFL, CH [EMAIL PROTECTED] /
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