Rationale for not releasing drivers as FOSS

[hewitt_tech]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jon maddog Hall" <maddog at li.org>
To: "Mark Komarinski" <mkomarinski at wayga.org>
Cc: "Ben Scott" <dragonhawk at gmail.com>; "GNHLUG" 
<gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2006 9:21 AM
Subject: Re: Rationale for not releasing drivers as FOSS


>
> mkomarinski at wayga.org said:
>> In case you're wondering why they did this, it was cheaper for them to 
>> have
>> one manufacturing line for the cards and it also allowed them to make 
>> either
>> version of the card on demand.
>
> In the mid-1970s Aetna Life and Casualty (at that time the largest 
> commercial
> user of IBM in the free world) decided to upgrade an IBM mainframe.  The
> upgrade cost something like 1.5 million dollars, which was a lot of money 
> back
> in those days.  IBM came in to do the upgrade, which we expected to take
> DAYS with RACKS of equipment.  The rep reached into his case, pulled out a
> floppy disk (8" back in those days) and stuck it into the CPU.  Ten 
> minutes
> later we had our upgrade.
>
> As the brain surgeon said, "You are not paying for the ten minutes in the
> operating room, you are paying for the twenty years of study where to 
> gouge."
>
> md
> -- 
> Jon "maddog" Hall
> Executive Director           Linux International(R)
> email: maddog at li.org         80 Amherst St.
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>
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Along similar lines, DEC in the days of the PDP 8A used a core memory board 
that supposedly had 4 K bytes (that's kilobyes folks!) which could be 
upgraded to 8 k. The upgrade was simply a matter of taking out the module 
and using a wire wrap tool to jumper in the extra 4 k of core that was 
already built in... I worked in the field service organization (1979-1981) 
and performed exactly that procedure.

-Alex