RE: Binary Drivers

David Schwartz
2006-12-21T20:50:58Z

> You say "It's rude to not play by our rules". They say "It's rude of
> you to expect us to change our business model to support your niche
> market differently from the way we support everyone else." Neither is
> wrong...

Honestly, I think it *is* wrong to sell someone a physical product and then
not tell them how to make it work. If you're not actually selling them the
physical product but selling them a way to get a particular thing done, then
don't represent that you're selling them physical product because that would
presumably include the right to use it any way they wanted provided it was
lawful.

How would you feel if you bought a car and then discovered that the
manufacturer had welded the hood shut? How many people still do their own
oil changes anyway?

If you sell a physical product, you should also include the information
necessary to make that physical product *work*. If you don't, you aren't
actually selling the physical product, that is, the person is buying a right
to use that physical product some particular way and not the product itself.

The law may come around on this issue. It has definitely done so on
companies that claim to be selling you cellphones but then later claim that
you need to pay them additional money if you want the access code to unlock
it and make it work with another carrier. If you own a physical phone, it
should come with the right to use it with any carrier it can be made to work
with, and a company with no ownership interest in the phone has no right to
withhold the information needed to make it do that so as to force you to use
their service.

The same applies when you buy a graphics card and don't want to use it with
the manufacturer's drivers. If it's *your* graphics card, the manufacturer
has no legitimate interest in forcing you to use their drivers by
withholding information about what *you* bought.

DS