Need help to write a new driver for a new wireless device (not yet in the market).

[Sriharsha Vedurmudi]

Hello Daniel,
 the simple reason that the community helps me is that I will be in a
position to help someone else stuck with similar problems. I believe a
community is a community of people not organization-to-organization. I
trust you can understand that every developer in this world cannot
belong to an organization that opens up all their IPs to the OS
community, some unfortunate ones like me belong to companies that
choose not to open up their IPs due to whatever reasons they believe
are true.

 The second question you asked, 'why does the company make the chip
that doesn't sell volumes (repeat volumes) in the market'. Well, there
can be 'n' reasons for it. It might be making this chip just as a
proof of concept for something, or might be targetting this chip at a
very small market or finally it is not complete yet. If the chip
finally succeeds to come into the open market, I dont see a reason why
they wouldn't want open source drivers of it out, but I don't run the
company nor have a say in its strategic decisions.

 Rest assured, when I start my own company, I'll definately give/take
open source software and share my code with everyone.

Regards,
Sriharsha.



On 10/3/07, Daniel Rose <drose at nla.gov.au> wrote:
> Sriharsha Vedurmudi wrote:
> > Hello Benjamin,
> >  As much as I want to share the spec, but I am under strict legal
> > agreements not to share it with anyone (not even outside our team).
> > Another case of corporate dictatorship, but I am helpless. Sorry about
> > it.
>
>
> Much as I usually don't like to chime in with a negative comment, I will anyway.  It's OK in this case because I don't know enough to be able to help anyway, so you're not missing out on anything.
>
> If a company wishes to develop something, and not share the details with the community, why should anyone in the community help the company?
>
> If this hardware takes off, then there will be more hardware around that requires "tainting" the kernel, especially at a time when we are having wins moving the other way (ATI, for example).
>
> If it doesn't, then we're all wasting our time; even the software that might potentially be useful to someone else will be discarded.
>
>
> >  But the good news is that, this particular chip might not hit the
> > markets, atleast not in volumes in the coming future.
> >
>
> How is that good news?  Why make it if you won't sell it?
>