On Thu, Jun 15, 2006 at 09:01:51AM -0600, Breen Ouellette wrote: > 1) The principle parties' exchanges didn't go anywhere. It is time to > crank the heat up a couple of notches. If the principle parties come in > and ask us to stop it will go a lot futher than you, some random person, > asking us to stop. I don't see Theo complaining, and he has a far > greater vested interest than you. I haven't seen other developers > complaining, and the same goes for them. I haven't even seen Hifn > complaining, although that would only weaken their position further.
I don't expect everyone to stop because I said so. I'm hoping that at least a few of you will go do something productive instead. > 2) It's not about brilliant insights. It is about customer > dissatisfaction. People are posting so there is a record that they are > not happy with the situation, and this record covers very clearly why > they are not happy with the situation. This goes a long way towards > punishing Hifn for what we perceive as acts which are not in our best > interests as customers. The alternative is silence, which allows Hifn to > continue to dupe customers. I do not want to see another person duped > like this, and it is now my personal mission to do what I am able to > prevent it from happening again. > > 3) Has this thread opened up Hifn's specs??! You expect results to take > place in an unreasonable amount of time. Change doesn't always happen > overnight, especially when corporations are involved. > > 4) This discussion has definitely accomplished something - it has > created a freely accessible, mirrored record which points out some very > serious flaws in the policies of a supposed security minded company. As > a consumer I have relied on exactly this sort of thing time and time > again to avoid bad purchases. I wish this thread had existed three > months ago so I wouldn't have purchased a blasted Hifn product that sits > unused on my shelf! > > And above all this, this thread shows that, for the most part, users are > behind the policies of the OpenBSD project. This sends a clear message > to the industry that we will hurt their bottom line if they screw around > with us. I only wish more projects and organizations would toe this line. This discussion made it to the front page of Slashdot, giving Hifn a lot of free publicity. It gives them the opportunity to tell everyone again that you can just go get their specs online. Maybe they can offer a nice BLOB to the Linux distros and get it accepted like nVidia. Maybe due to this they will sell MORE hardware than before. If half the people heavily involved with this thread had drawn up a well worded message and sent it to Hifn it would have had a better effect, I bet. We'll see. I surely don't expect policy changes overnight. If Hifn truly opens their specs in the next year I'll be surprised. And that is what will change my mind about the value of this discussion. FYI, someone recently mentioned www.vendorwatch.org. It's a nice resource, and I hope it grows. I keep forgetting it's there. Next time I'm shopping for hardware I'll be checking there! -- Darrin Chandler | Phoenix BSD Users Group [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://bsd.phoenix.az.us/ http://www.stilyagin.com/ |
