Message-ID: <02ea01c06654$57437aa0$7830a3ce@g1e7m6>
From: "Miles Lane" <miles@megapathdsl.net>
To: <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Will the large corporate contributors to Linux like IBM help us get more device specifications?
Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 21:02:20 -0800
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Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org

Hi,

There seems to be an ongoing need for a stronger relationship between
the kernel development community and the various hardware vendors.
Specifically, the current situation seems to often be that individuals from
the community are banging on random doors and sending e-mail to
support staff asking whether they can be given access to device specs
under NDA or, preferably, with no restrictions for the purposes of 
driver development.

It seems to me that IBM's commitment to spend $1B this coming year
on Linux development, combined with IBM's considerable influence
in the general computing space might enable them to help the Linux 
kernel community forge new and much closer relationships with IHVs.

Ideally, these new relationships would involve more information being
pushed to us rather than pulled by us.

An area in of great need of access to specifications is USB development.
Things are going well with reverse engingeering for many devices, but this
is slow, prone to error and probably misses taking advantage of 
proprietary speedups available from intimate specification knowledge.
This is particularly true when we come up against vendor-specific USB 
protocol implementations.

Would it make any sense to ask these large corporate participants
whether they would be willing to put together some sort of device
specification collection group along with members of the Linux 
kernel community?  A group including representatives of these 
many groups might have more leverage with IHVs than the Linux
kernel community has now.

I hope this helps,

    Miles


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