Comments on Andre's posting

Comments on Andre's posting

[Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai]

Hi,

I haven't been involved in this childish argument before, but what I was
pointed out to by friends of mine got me curious, and after reading the
post they pointed me to, I had to respond to correct some things.

I want to point out a couple of things which I find rather peculiar:

1) Andre is responding on this whole issue, as far as word reached me,
   it was a guy called Arjan working at RedHat who borrowed his code.
   So why is Andre getting all up-tight here?  I fail to see any
   relevance.

2) Soren never called the ones who borrowed the code thieves at all, it
   was a headline by Slashdot.  [Didn't know you put so much trust in
   what Slashdot proclaims, Andre. :) ]

3) Also, I have had contacts with Highpoint and Promise a long while now
   and have been working with them all along the last year or longer now
   [djeez, time flies] and am working on getting other vendors with new
   and exciting product to help us with documentation.  I was the one
   who provided Soren with documentation, which I got from the vendors.
   And since I don't know you and you don't know me, I am really
   surprised that you apparantly have more in-depth knowledge about _my_
   relation to these vendors than I have.  I am looking forward in you
   reading my hand and telling me about my future.
   And quite frankly I have to laugh that you had to sign a NDA.
   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.

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].

5) ATA-133, like I said in #3, we are in contact with vendors about
   documentation about this.  All of which is perfectly legal, I am
   curious where you get your facts from.

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.

Furthermore, I personally, as part of a business, would be very very
disappointed in you as a person, Andre, in quoting/forwarding private
communication into a public forum.  A sad lack of netiquette if you ask
me.

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!  I think Soren acted very responsible into contacting Arjan
from RedHat about this issue and settling it in a mature way.

And last, but certainly not least, I am very disappointed in how you in
return explicitely mention the likeliness that BSD will steal your code,
whereas Soren remained pretty neutral about the whole issue [and
actually worked with Arjan from RedHat to correct this issue].

Sad to see you sinking deeper, I have watched you go on rants against
people in the past, but this is absurd, and I am glad you are but an
exeption amongst the rest of the fine Linux developer crowd.  May you
soon grow up.

-- 
Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven/Asmodai asmodai@[wxs.nl|freebsd.org|xmach.org]
Documentation nutter/C-rated Coder, finger asmodai@ninth-circle.dnsalias.net
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/
Truth is one; the wise call it by different names...

Re: Comments on Andre's posting

[Daniela Engert]

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