From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > 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.
I'm not sure the explanation sets anything *straight*. Hifn wishes to try to open things up to be what they think is open enough for the open source community to use, but they can't commit to do it right. Is Hifn "open" or not? There is no "mostly open" or "kind of open" or "open under conditions A B and C, and be sure to give us personal information." > 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. Software license? Code? You, like many vendors before you, make the mistake of thinking that it is your source code that is wanted. NO ONE WANTS YOUR SOURCES. Specifications and documentation on how to interface with the hardware is what is useful. > 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. Weak. Docs and specifications != product. Look. I am an example of somebody who purchased a Hifn product because at the time I had some idea that the card would be well supported by the OS that I would use it in. I've since lost that warm fuzzy. If the required documentation can't be opened up, correctly, to the developers who would write OS drivers for it, then I have no need to buy more (or even continue using my existing half-supported card.) I am an example of someone who could very well no longer purchase Hifn, nor recommend that others purchase it for their own use, based on the fact that my OS vendors of choice cannot adequately support it. I have other choices. DS
