>>>>> "Stephan" == Stephan von Krawczynski : Stephan> On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 16:46:19 -0400 Stephan> Brandon Stewart wrote: >> I thought that this line of argument was due to FCC >> regulations. That is, software settings would allow the hardware to >> violate frequency or strength-of-signal limitations set by >> government regulations. This is only from memory, so feel free to >> correct. Stephan> I think I have read in an earlier thread something the like. Stephan> But I cannot understand how this can be logically linked to Stephan> releasing docs. If all companies would follow this thought Stephan> e.g. Siemens would never have released the docs for ISDN Stephan> chipsets and therefore no ISDN drivers would be in the Stephan> kernel. I'd rather say someone with money is afraid ... Yes, that sounds rather ridiculous. Sooner or later someone is going to reverse-engineer the thing, so not releasing drivers or specs just delays this moment. If there's a manager at Intel that thinks this way, he doesn't understand much about security. [...] Stephan> Some political explosives are in this thread ... Politically, this sounds to me like an antitrust case against Intel and Microsoft handed on a platter. A major hardware manufacturer releases information and software only to one dominating software company, while locking out the others. Unfortunately, we live in a world of compromises. If I were RedHat, I'd stay real quiet and play nice in order to get Intel's cooperation on servers (which brings revenue) instead of fighting for laptops (which is a niche market for Linux, in a chicken-and-egg sort of way). It's rather sad. --J.