Re: Comments on Andre's posting

["Daniela Engert" <dani@ngrt.de>]

Hi!

As the developer of the OS/2 ATA/ATAPI drivers I'd like to add a few
comments.

On Wed, 26 Sep 2001 16:16:13 +0200, Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai wrote:

>3) Also, I have had contacts with Highpoint and Promise a long while now

I've learned Highpoint being very helpful but Promise being extremely
tight-lipped.

>   And quite frankly I have to laugh that you had to sign a NDA.

Good point!

>   Promise and Highpoint Technologies were quite willing to hand us the
>   documentation without an NDA.  We just felt it was the honourable
>   thing to do to not spread these docs.  Call it a matter of trust and
>   mutual respect.

So did I with manufacturer docs I was given.

>4) 48-bit addressing is already in the pipeline since Soren has the
>   official specifications from the t13 Technical Committee [which for
>   all I know, are freely downloadable].

True. There are no secrets.

>For some reason I cannot help but put big questionmarks behind Andre's
>exclamation that he was so quick to add ATA-100 after release of the
>information.  Congratulations to you Andre for being so quick, I hope
>your eagerness for speed doesn't in fact put stability in jeopardy.

Exactly. Andre: your Promise Ultra100 TX2 code is not correct. It
should not base vital decisions on contents of non-existent registers.

>Also, funny how you seem to funnel your anger or something to that
>extent into making sure everything gets licensed in such a way that
>others cannot use it.  If that is the free software spirit you envision
>then you scared me.  The only, reasonable, thing Soren asked for was
>proper attribution and credit of/for work he performed and work which
>was put under a BSD License.  To be honest, if a BSD (FreeBSD, NetBSD,
>OpenBSD) would've used GPLd code and filed off the copyright we would've
>seen a large rant about how unethical the BSD developers are, the pinko
>commies!

Well, I had to learn Andre is using code that I had developped and
given to him verbatim in his drivers without any credits. But I just
don't care. If it's to the benefit of the Linux users (and probably
even more) I'm happy with that.

My policy in helping other developers is something like tit-for-tat.
Let's share information, let's share experiences (there are so many
bugs/issues in the hardware to deal with), let's help each other!

Ciao,
  Dani

(The OS/2 ATA/ATAPI gal)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Daniela Engert, systems engineer at MEDAV GmbH
Gräfenberger Str. 34, 91080 Uttenreuth, Germany
Phone ++49-9131-583-348, Fax ++49-9131-583-11