why not OS X?

[Timothy A. Seufert]

At 8:40 PM -0500 6/4/02, Robert Brandtjen wrote:
>On Tuesday 04 June 2002 08:29 pm, Timothy A. Seufert wrote:
>>  Clearly you are ignorant of what Linux driver development is actually
>>  like.  Examples of PC hardware without freely available specs are
>>  quite easy to find; in fact that's more the rule than the exception.
>
>No I'm not - most MB manufacturers support linux - as opposed to Apple. Please
>name one who doesn't. Chips? again, which of the two, Intel or AMD refuses
>information for Linux kernel developers?

Follow the linux-kernel mailing list for a while (as I do) and tell 
me that nobody has closed docs again.  Even vendors that supply docs 
are not necessarily consistent about doing so for their whole product 
line.  I was exxagerating with the "more the rule" thing, but lack of 
docs is far from rare.

Intel example:

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=98244300813167&w=2

Oh, and take a look at this message concerning IDE chipsets:

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=102040727623735&w=2

note that the "Docs avail" column has quite a few dashes indicating no docs.

I'm not finding it at the moment, but I recall much discussion 
involving cursing at Via for failing to properly document stuff 
concerning its chipsets, especially workarounds for bugs in them.

And is your memory so short that you have forgotten about NVidia? 
They won't tell you how to use their 3D engines.  They might ship 
binary only drivers for x86 Linux, but if you want more than that, 
too bad.


>BEOS - now there's an example of how forthcomming Apple is -
>Clearly you are ignorant of Apple's treatment to those outside it.

Be claimed that Apple kept them from supporting the original PowerMac 
G3 by refusing to document it.  The PMG3 motherboard was not much 
different from the OS point of view when compared to earlier PowerMac 
motherboards that BeOS already supported.  It replaced an Apple 
proprietary northbridge chip with Motorola's MPC106, and changed the 
CPU to a G3.  The southbridge chip was revised, but not by much, and 
certainly within the reach of easy reverse engineering given that Be 
already had working drivers for the previous version of the chip. 
(Proof: it didn't take very long for Linux to start working on the 
G3, with no support from Apple.)

Guess what, Robert?  The complete documentation for both the major 
components that changed could be downloaded for free from Motorola. 
Pardon me if I choose to believe that Be's finger pointing was just a 
way to avoid admitting the obvious truth to its PPC users: that when 
Be decided to bet the future of the company on the Intel version, 
management decided to nearly abandon work on the PPC version.

And none of that's relevant to what Apple is doing now, of course. 
You have done nothing to counteract the point I made about Apple 
actually providing driver source.
-- 
Tim Seufert