27 Jul
2006
27 Jul
'06
9:38 p.m.
On Thursday 27 July 2006 19:34, Renich Bon Ćirić wrote:
[...]
First one has to open an effective channel of communications in order to
get close enough to somebody who would know what an NDA is, something I've
tried several times over the decades with only one success, usually you
find somebody co-operative who makes you think you might have a chance at
getting some assistance, but 3 days later you call back to confirm a
detail and that person has been fired or transferred out of that dept.,
primarily one suspects for the simple act of getting too close to the
customer.
However, Renish, if you are not representing Akai in this, then why the
secrecy?
Akai is going to want to know why you want to know all this stuff, and just
to play cma, I wouldn't even try to put a coat of varnish on it. Tell
them straight up that the hardware is great but the OS sucks and you want
to fix it, writing it from scratch in a clean room scenario, meaning you
will never see a copy of their src, just the specs that writing to such
and such an address writes to what register, and what every bit or byte
written makes it do what. AIUI, then you can GPL it, or if no GPL'd
libraries or anything like that is used, you could make it proprietary.
But we both know you'll get a lot more help if its open and GPL'd.
And, just to get some stability, for every register you write to using
their specs for whats written vs whats supposed to happen, I'd take the
time to verify that the results you get and their specs agree. I've found
more than one bug, a couple of them fairly serious, in the hardware using
that exersize it all technique.
I expect you will do whatever and however you want in any event, so I'll go
away and see if my rocking chair still rocks, or something. :)
--
Cheers, Gene
People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word
'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's
stupid bounce rules. I do use spamassassin too. :-)
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
From my viewpoint, Akai's legal dept., who is obviously controlling
what Renich can say, will see to it that the product fails. Its up to
Akai to make a liar out of me. If they would join the open source camp
by supporting the coders with all the info, publicly available to any
and all, that they will need to write the drivers this device will
need, distribute this OS under the GPL with a server that lets *anyone*
download it for free, or on a mailable cd for a couple of bucks
american, while selling the hardware for $1000 to $1500, and watch the
hardware sales blossum like our wild flowers along the interstate.
Thats because the unshackled coders will write stuff that stretches the
limits of what the hardware can do, just to see if they can. Its
rather like climbing Mt. Everest, because its there. :)
Well, I think we are getting a bit... carried away. I am not from akai,
in fact, my purpose is to ask akai to help us help them because there OS
sucks. It has too many bugs... that's the purpose of all this. If they
refuse, then I am willing to start an OS myself. That's all.