I don't really have the time (or background) to work on drivers for new
hardware but I want to interject one small comment here.  If you're
going to deal with companies and you want to be taken seriously you have
to deal with them in a professional manner.  You can't make demands of a
company.  They are in business to make money and probably aren't real
interested in the philosophical side of the open source movement.  The
magic phrase here is quid pro quo.  They give/loan us something and we
give them drivers/support.  When you get right down to it we're donating
our time and effort for a much less tangible (but no less important)
return.  Let's try not to look at it like we're being victimized.  I
don't know about the rest of you but I work on the software because 1) I
use it; 2) I like working on software (I know, I'm sick, it's also my
job at work); and 3) because I like helping other people.
Jan
On Wed, 2004-03-03 at 11:01, Joern Nettingsmeier wrote:
 On Wed, 3 Mar 2004, Daniel James wrote:
    Before
talking about an individual developer's
 "responsibility" to do free work for a hardware company, we should
 be talking about that developer's worth to the company. 
 Perhaps - but let me put it like this. The professional Linux audio
 market is currently so small as to be insignificant to a hardware
 company. We currently rely on good will to get any loan hardware or
 specifications. 
 
 while i may agree with the general gist of marek's first objection, it
 seems to me he is (again) shooting the messenger here.
 it is certainly more desirable to have vendors supply drivers or
 development samples of hardware without strings attached. but the fact is,
 many don't.
 if i understood daniel's intent correctly, he is trying to provide a
 *mechanism* for how hardware loans and/or donations should be handled.
 marek is talking about *policy*. in good unix tradition, those should
 kept separate.
 back to lurk mode, regards
 joern
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