Whyzzi wrote:
On 31/08/06, Marc G. Fournier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
what my point is, though, is if we aren't willing to
accept 'vendor written drivers', then it is *we* that are limiting our
growth but limiting what hardware we can run stably on ...
Sadly, you've twisted the point in the wrong direction.
Since we aren't willing to accept 'vendor written drivers', those
vendors don't deserve our advocacy or our dollars. *We* did not limit
our growth, the vendors limit theirs: by not being able to sell to our
market.
Time and Again I've seen the OpenBSD team make a request documentation
in order to make drivers, time and again I've seen that request
denied. Simply put, the vendor is closing their door on a chance to
make more revenue and thus increase profits for their company by not
providing the correct documentation to open source developers.
Not only that, but since when is it part of OpenBSD's goals to meet some
sort of growth projection? In particular, it is stated on the Project
Goals page of OpenBSD.org:
"Pay attention to security problems and fix them before anyone else does."
This cannot be achieved by allowing closed source / closed documentation
into the project. It's "Open" BSD. It only makes sense that the project
supports hardware vendors which support the project goals. We don't need
every vendor to recognize that it is in their best interests to support
the project goals, but we definitely DO NOT want to imply to vendors
that we will compromise those goals. We are the customers - and when the
vendor loses sight of what customers want, they lose sales and another
vendor moves in to fill the void. If we don't make it clear that we want
open documentation then no one will provide it. The market is dynamic -
just look at any stock exchange! Use that to your advantage and don't
support closed vendors.
I don't know why so many projects appear to be centered on the idea that
they need to outstrip the user bases of other OSes. If it works for you
then use it (and support it, financially if you cannot support it any
other way!). If it doesn't work for you then go find something that
does. Who cares how many other people are using it? Worry about the
goals of the project and the results (vendors getting on board, a larger
user base, etc.) will follow.
I think it is likely that the user bases of certain projects don't want
to take responsibility for their hardware purchases, and as a result
have hoodwinked the developers into making poor decisions about project
goals. The users want to go out and buy any part and have it just work.
They don't want to do any research first to make sure it is the right
purchase. They want to close their eyes to reality and instead hope that
the companies selling hardware will do "the right thing", when it flies
in the face of common sense for an entity whose entire purpose is
maximize shareholder profit to do "the right thing". It is a typical
case of consumer apathy, and the projects that cater to this apathy will
only hurt themselves in the long run. They will grow unmanageable
projects which constantly break, and that breakage will be outside of
the control of the developers and in the hands of hardware vendors
trying to push new products.
Dozens of messages on this topic and it is merely doing what I predicted
it would do - wasting the resources of the OpenBSD mailing list. Nothing
is being solved by this discussion, and the very little of it that deals
with OpenBSD only does so in a roundabout way.
Breeno
PS - KILL THIS THREAD. Stop replying to it and it will go away. There
never was any point to it which affected OpenBSD. The woes of a subset
of NetBSD devs / users do not affect OpenBSD. If NetBSD ever did die as
a project then the user base would move on, the devs would move on, and
new developers would move in to tackle new projects and pick up slack.
Open Source is a dynamic environment and change will not kill it. Change
is unavoidable but people adapt to it.
