[osol-mktg] RE: [osol-discuss] Solaris on Intel's Classmate PC?

[Kaiwai Gardiner]

On 31/03/07, Shawn Walker <binarycrusader at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 30/03/07, Kaiwai Gardiner <kaiwai.gardiner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Yes, I can understand the chicken and the egg scenario, however, one has
> to
> > look at this; I went down the road today, window shopping, every laptop
> I
> > had a look at down at the computer retailers had the Intel 3945 A/B/G
> > wireless chipset - it is the most popular chipset out there, and
> normally
> > coupled with the e1000g wired NIC - why, considering how wide spread the
> > device is, is it left completely unsupported given that there is a *BSD
> > licenced driver for it?
>
> As mentioned before, just because some random piece of code is
> available for a device doesn't mean that there is not a good reason
> for a driver to be available. Just as OpenBSD supports many wireless
> devices that Linux does not yet support, Solaris does not yet support
> many devices as well -- even the "common" ones.
>
> Just as others have talked about during the "GPL driver debate", if
> Solaris were suddenly under the GPLv2, it wouldn't magically make
> thousands of drivers available for instant use. Porting drivers is
> hard work, and many times its easier to write a new one with well
> documented specs than to try to port one that is poorly documented,
> friendly license or not.


But given how easily that the OpenBSD drivers have been ported to NetBSD and
FreeBSD, the 'documentation' red herring is an old wives tale.


> > Sure, I can understand that Sun can't support *every* device that is out
> > there; that would be unreasonable, but given that there is currently a
> > working relationship between Sun and Intel, just as there is a working
> > relationship between AMD and Sun, there should be absolutely *NO* reason
> for
> > Solaris not supporting all the Intel product line, just as there should
> be
> > no excuse for Sun not to support the full AMD/Ati product line.
>
> Given that the ATi division is still incredibly secretive about the
> hardware specs, even with business that have a relationship with them,
> there are reasons for not having full support. One of those reasons is
> ATi. As I've mentioned to others before, I know of one company in
> particular that even offered money to ATi to write a closed source
> driver under nda driver and they refused to offer the necessary
> specifications. I can only hope AMD will slowly change that behaviour,
> but until it does, there are reasons.
>
> The wheels of the corporate world move *very* slowly, especially when
> exchanging what each company perceives as "trade secrets"
> (legitimately or not).


With that sort of attitude held by AMD/Ati, then maybe Sun should put its
foot down, offer them two choices, either they step up and provide a quality
driver supporting their range of devices, which could be offered as a
upgrade option on their Opteron machines, or Sun turn around and scrap the
use of Ati graphics chipsets in all Sun products, as well as phasing out the
sales of AMD based workstations.

Amd *OWN* Ati now, they have no excuse; if the management at Amd don't have
the back bone to lay down the law on those at Ati, then one has to ask, who
is running Amd? its like when those at Sun pushing SPARC at all costs, in
the midst of dropping revenue's - who was running Sun there? Put your foot
down and say, "no, this is how we do it; its either my way, or the high way"
and show those decenting voices the door.

Matt
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