Re: Getting physical addresses of mmap'd pages from userspace

[Tom Cooksey <thomas.cooksey@trolltech.com>]

On Tuesday 14 October 2008 17:47:06 Bill Gatliff wrote:
> Tom Cooksey wrote:
> 
> > <RANT>
> > What I don't understand is that I'm trying to do some pretty interesting & cool
> > stuff with their processors (of course I would say that!), which will probably
> > help them sell more units. Why then do they make it so difficult to work with
> > them? It feels like they're shooting themselves in the foot. Madness.
> > </RANT>
> 
> Not to perpetuate this further, but I can't resist...  :)
> 
> That's because their product won't stand on its own; it needs vendor lock-in to
> be successful.  There really isn't any other explanation for such behavior.
> 
> Think like a biologist.  If an organism does something, then the upside must be
> better then the downside of NOT doing that something, or the organism wouldn't
> waste scarce time and energy doing it--- no matter how ridiculous that something
> might be.  Unusual markings, mating calls, mullet haircuts...
> 
> One would think that in the world of high-technology, there would be a huge
> upside to making products easy to use, which would naturally require free
> availability of documentation and code (among other things).  But vendors seem
> to work contrary to that objective, which must mean that there's an even bigger
> upside to NOT making a product easy to use.
> 
> Put another way, their revenue stream depends on making your life as painful as
> possible, so that you won't want to risk repeating that pain by switching to a
> competitor's product.  It's a "shock collar ^K^K^K electrically-enhanced
> training aid", so to speak, and we're the dogs.  And not the
> chihuahua-in-Paris-Hilton's-purse kind of dogs, either.
> 
> Here's more evidence to support my point: what exactly is the cost to release
> documentation without an NDA?  About US$0, which is considerably less than the
> expense of executing an NDA.  So why have the NDA?  Because that expense must be
> an "investment" in something that nets a larger return to the vendor of the
> documents in question.  What might that be?  Hmmm....

I always assumed it's because releasing the source opens them up to patent
infringement law suits? Some companies are more paranoid than others.