From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailserv2.iuinc.com (qmailr@mailserv2.iuinc.com [206.245.164.55]) by puffin.external.hp.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id BAA06284 for ; Wed, 15 Dec 1999 01:29:05 -0700 Sender: adevries@thepuffingroup.com Message-ID: <3857507B.3248918E@thepuffingroup.com> Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 03:25:31 -0500 From: Alex deVries MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Alan Cox CC: John David Anglin , parisc-linux@thepuffingroup.com Subject: Re: [parisc-linux] HP releasing docs... References: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii List-ID: Alan Cox wrote: > If > its carrying on as an open public port and HP are willing to open all > their document access and like to other folks I dont see a problem. Having HP opening up documents is probably more difficult than most of you realize, and in the same way that other hardware vendors can't release documents on portions of hardware for fear of releasing competitive information, HP is limited as well. Expecting HP to open up *all* documentation is unrealistic. Also, releasing the documentation isn't just pressing the magic button labelled "Release Publicly" in red. The docs have to be found, screened, edited, reformatted etc. Ideally, though, developers will have access to all the hardware they're porting to. What's second best is to be able to do development of certain portions under NDA. This can be used when the docs for the hardware *can't* be released, or when they're not ready to be released. Advanced viewing helps out a lot. The Puffin Group's set up to do this, although we haven't generated any useable code in this situation yet. Signing such NDAs has helped us with quite a few other ways though, in terms of planning. The open source linker would never have happened, for instance. NDA's aren't quite the evil they're made out to be, having them has really given us a better insight into how to do parisc-linux. - Alex -- Alex deVries Vice President of Engineering The Puffin Group