>>>>> "r" == Ross <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >>>>> "np" == Neil Perrin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
np> 2. I received the board and driver from another group within
np> Sun. It would be better to contact Micro Memory (or whoever
np> took them over) directly, as it's not my place to give out 3rd
np> party drivers or provide support for them.
Then hopefully when Sun releases their new batch of SSD devices, they
will release source for the full driver stack under a redistributable
license so that no well-meaning geek has to be in your awkwardly
unhelpful position, caught between obligations of
NDA/copyright/``place'' and the basic and reasonable obligations
necessary to maintain a ``community''.
I've heard Sun people at users' groups promise that all new Solaris
subsystems will include source, but so far this doesn't apply to
hardware, not even to the hardware Sun sells. In this case source
would solve (1) and (2) because you'd be (2) free to redistribute
whatever you had a month ago, and Ross would (1) have a fighting
chance of forward-porting the driver he got from you.
This isn't the case for existing Sun disk drivers that I know about
like the X4500 SATA chip or the LSI Logic mpt RAID card in SPARC SATA
systems, while Linux and I think BSD have free software drivers for
both chips---at best the Sun drivers are (2) redistributable, and I'm
not even clear on that because it's surprisingly tricky to determine.
r> they simply don't support these for end users, it's for large
r> OEM's only. [...] found the e-mail address of Micro Memory's
r> lead software developer,
who, unlike the salespeople, will probably understand the obvious
difference between providing ``support,'' and taking the basic
responsibility to either archive all downloadables that aren't
redistributable, or make them redistributable if they don't want to
track them any more, but who probably won't be in a position to help
you any more than Neil is.
If their contractor did give you the drivers, would you avoid
mentioning it here for fear a bunch of other people would ask you for
copies, putting you in the same awkward spot? Would you justify the
reticence by thinking you were hiding the drivers from us out of
loyalty and ``gratitude'' to the contractor who wrote them? It
stinks, and I recognize the smell. We've been here before. I ought
to have better things to do with my life than pirating software to
support obscure proprietary abandonware (but apparently not better
than writing emails whining about the situation).
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