>There has been some discussion of late on this list about Hifn's policy >with respect to releasing documentation to the general public. That >discussion lead to a great deal of uninformed speculation and >unflattering statement's about Hifn's unfriendliness towards the open >source community. I would like to set the record straight. > >The simple fact is that anyone who wants access to Hifn's documentation >need only log on to our extranet site (http://extranet.hifn.com/home/) >to download as much as they like.
That URL is not a place where you can download data sheets. That is a registration site that requires anyone who wants data sheets to enter approximately 50 personal questions. I can get documentation for pretty much 99% of the chips in the industry without supplying any private information. I don't TRUST you to keep my personal data private. >Specifically the documentation for 7954, 7955 and 7956 is available. >The other chips that are supported by the Open BSD Crypto drivers >hifn(4), lofn(4) and nofn(4) (7751, 7811,7951, 9751, 6500, 7814, 7851 >and 7854) are legacy parts that are not recommended for new designs. >The driver will also work for 7954 even though that is not listed. All of this is irrelevant. You require people to register. Do you understand what you are asking people to do? You are saying "Please give us all your private information, and then use the data sheets to write code that will help sell our product". >This does represent some liberalization of access in recent months. No it does not. 8 years ago all the above data sheets were fully available for download without any registration. Then about 5 years ago hifn closed up completely, and documentation was totally unavailable. About 2 years ago hifn went to this new model of "answer 50 personal questions". "50 personal questions" is not open access. Please don't lie about it. Other crypto chip vendors make their data much more easily available. >Hifn is always monitoring its policy with respect to the confidentiality >of documentation and other business information. No, hifn is not monitoring the effects of their policy at all. Over the last few years I have had extensive email conversations with hifn employees (including you) on this issue, and absolutely nothing has changed. You still think it is OK to get this personal information from people. You tried to pacify me in private mail. >Some information will >probably always require a non-disclosure agreement. Information that >falls into that category is generally of a sensitive competitive nature, >contains trade secrets or is related to unanounced or unreleased >products. But we don't care about that information. We simply care about completely unfettered access to data sheets that were freely available without registration 8 years ago. >Software licenses are generally restricted in the disclosure or source >code reproduction rights. Hifn reserves the right to keep our source >code proprietary. This should not affect the hifn(4) driver since that >driver is programmed directly to the hardware and does not use Hifn's >enablement software library. The only person talking about hifn's proprietary code is you. If you showed it to us, we would not bother looking at it. >Registration at our extranet is required along with an email address >that can be confirmed. We cannot support anonymous FTP or http >downloads. The reason for this is that we are required by the >conditions of our US export licenses to know who and where our customers >are. If anyone objects to registration then we could not sell them >chips anyway so it does not seem an unreasonable restriction to us. So the personal information you ask for in the registration process will be given to the US government if they ask? Without court documents demanding the information? We are not your customers. YOU ARE OUR CUSTOMER. Our driver sells your chips. I know that our hifn driver has some problems. But because I cannot get data sheets without giving you private information, I will not spend even one moment more of my time to improve support for your products. Jason and I spent a lot of time writing that code in the past, but because your policies are privacy invasive towards us, and thus completely thankless for the sales that we have given you in the past -- we will not spend any more time on your crummy products. And if you continue baiting me, I will delete the driver from our source tree. I stand by my statement that HIFN is not open.
