RE: aac support

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To: "'Tobias Weingartner'" <weingart@tepid.org>, "'Sean Hafeez'" <sah.list@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 02:21:07 -0600

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-misc@openbsd.org [mailto:owner-misc@openbsd.org]
> On Behalf Of Tobias Weingartner
> Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2005 9:54 PM
> To: Sean Hafeez
> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; misc@cvs.openbsd.org;
> weingart@tepid.org
> Subject: Re: aac support
>
> On Saturday, March 19, Sean Hafeez wrote:
> >
> > There has got to be a better way to work with the vendors
> in order to
> > get the support we need. It just seem to me that the "screw
> you guys,
> > I am going home" stuff just does not work.
>
> Other approaches have been tried. Extensively, and for a long time.
> If you know of an approach that works, please demonstrate.
> At this point, I believe that the community would welcome
> someone that is going to step up, and have adaptec supply the
> documentation because they negotiated it out of them. Words
> here are cheap... but at the current time, they are the only
> thing we really have left. The voice of the community.
>
>
> > The vendors need a business
> > case in order to do things - they are in business to make
> money and I
> > can agree with that.
>
> They have a business case. More than one. 1800+ cards is
> not a business case? The points I brought up are not a
> business case? The bad press and such are not a business
> case? Give me a break.
>
>
> --Toby.
>
I work for one of these vendors. I know the release of documentation on one
of the RAID controllers this company shipped for several years was not based
on logic, let alone a $ amount. The decision was left to a single manager
who waffled back and forth about whether the information should be released.
The engineer who was pushing for the docs to be available eventually
published them on a web site, indicating his company email address as a
point of contact. It was a gutsy, yet arbitrary decision on his part that
led to the opening of docs. After the release of the docs, the company
started publishing their 'friedliness' to OSS.

My experience tells me the only way to get the attention of people in a
large company like Adaptec is to take drastic measures. If this means
emailing people who can affect change until they are sufficiently annoyed to
make a decision one way or another, so be it. It is most likely one of the
few methods that will work. There is most likely a single person who will
make the decision and it may boil down to whether they are having a good day
or not. If their response is 'no', it will be stated that this is due to
'contractual obligations', 'intellectual property', 'on the advice of our
lawyers..' or some other rubbish.

As a user of OpenBSD, I am glad to see this stance taken (again). The
people I admire in life are the people that stand up for their principles
and are true to themselves and their beliefs. The people I despise are
those that gladly sacrifice their stated beliefs to increase their wealth or
comfort.

OpenBSD does not support all of the hw I use. This is due to some of the hw
being 'closed'. Some of it is not supported because the developers have not
had enough interest in writing the driver. I did what I could by providing
hw to some of the developers in the hope that it will be supported one day.
Some of this hw is made by the company I work for, but it had to be provided
out of my pocket because the company is too short sighted to see the benefit
of providing hw to the OpenBSD team. They do freely use OpenSSH in a number
of products however...

It is unpopular these days to speak directly on issues. In my lowly
opinion, Theo can be abrasive at times and I do not always agree with him.
He seems to be morally and intellectually honest, and this is rare. The
operating system he and the rest of the developers have given to us is true
to their stated goals and has served me very well. For all of these
reasons, I stand behind the OpenBSD team and will add Adaptec to the list of
vendors I will not use or recommend (Intel, Broadcom, etc).

mark

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• Previous message: Dan Langille: "The FreeBSD Diary: 2005-02-27 - 2005-03-19"
• In reply to: Tobias Weingartner: "Re: aac support"
• Next in thread: John Knight: "Re: aac support"
• Reply: John Knight: "Re: aac support"
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