Re: Centrino support

[Jan Rychter <jan@rychter.com>]

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>>>>> "Stephan" == Stephan von Krawczynski <skraw@ithnet.com>:
 Stephan> On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 16:46:19 -0400
 Stephan> Brandon Stewart <rbrandonstewart@yahoo.com> wrote:

 >> I thought that this line of argument was due to FCC
 >> regulations. That is, software settings would allow the hardware to
 >> violate frequency or strength-of-signal limitations set by
 >> government regulations. This is only from memory, so feel free to
 >> correct.

 Stephan> I think I have read in an earlier thread something the like.
 Stephan> But I cannot understand how this can be logically linked to
 Stephan> releasing docs. If all companies would follow this thought
 Stephan> e.g. Siemens would never have released the docs for ISDN
 Stephan> chipsets and therefore no ISDN drivers would be in the
 Stephan> kernel. I'd rather say someone with money is afraid ...

Yes, that sounds rather ridiculous. Sooner or later someone is going to
reverse-engineer the thing, so not releasing drivers or specs just
delays this moment. If there's a manager at Intel that thinks this way,
he doesn't understand much about security.

[...]

 Stephan> Some political explosives are in this thread ...

Politically, this sounds to me like an antitrust case against Intel and
Microsoft handed on a platter. A major hardware manufacturer releases
information and software only to one dominating software company, while
locking out the others.

Unfortunately, we live in a world of compromises. If I were RedHat, I'd
stay real quiet and play nice in order to get Intel's cooperation on
servers (which brings revenue) instead of fighting for laptops (which is
a niche market for Linux, in a chicken-and-egg sort of way).

It's rather sad.

--J.

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