In praise of winmodems.

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>>>>> "Roy" == Roy Millar <rmill@Millstream.ednet.co.uk> writes:

    Roy> Take a look at the X Windows drivers for SVGA cards to see
    Roy> what a mess can result from the proprietary approach.  It's
    Roy> surprising that the Xfree86 people could extract enough info
    Roy> from the manufacturers to write the drivers.

What you are seeing here is a marketing cop-out.  They are selling a
graphics solution for windows-xx and nt platforms, not a piece of
hardware.  They furnish drivers along with the hardware, and an
installation procedure for both the hardware and the drivers.  

That way they can cover up problems in the hardware design with
software work-arounds in the driver code, and they do not have to
publish any spec for the hardware insofar as to how it actually works, 
because they are selling a brand name, not a particular hardware
configfuration.  Since they own the trademarked brand name, they can
change the design any time, yet they can still call it the same thing.

This works well for them, because they want to establish a reputation
for the brand among consumers, not among engineers and kernel
hackers.  The linux community is probably currently only 5% of the
market for these boards, so given the other 95% is brain dead an only
goes for the recognized brand name, noth the hardware itself, this is
the easiest way for the manufacturers to go after the biggest piece of 
the pie.  

As Linux increases in popularity -- which it is already doing in a big
way -- we will see a change in this practice, unless *GOD FORBID* we
see proprietary drivers for Linux on the CD that comes with the board,
and we loose control of the source for what goes into the kernel.  I
do not think this is likeley, since there are so many different
version fo the kernel out there, but with the way Red Hat is going
making deals with big vendors, I could be wrong.  It may come to the
point where you must be running the latest version of Red Hat, or the
whole board is not supported by the vendor.

Most old-time Linux and Unix people would just not buy such a board,
but when stores start selling machines with Linux pre-installed, the
sheer market volume may change the face of Linux forever so it will
look more like the traditional MS model for consumer software.

Consumer computer and software manufacturers do not really like the
Linux model because it scares them -- too different from what feels
familiar to them.  Book publishers, on the other hand, are doing great 
with good books about Linux and Unix.  Just look at O'Rielly.

-- 
--------  "And there came a writing to him from Elijah"  [2Ch 21:12]  --------
R. J. Brown III  rj@elilabs.com http://www.elilabs.com/~rj  voice 847 543-4060
Elijah Laboratories Inc. 457 Signal Lane, Grayslake IL 60030  fax 847 543-4061
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