Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 18 Jul 1997 12:07:20 -0500 | From | Tall cool one <> | Subject | Re: The i2o Bus: A Conspiracy Against Free Software? |
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Rogier Wolff <R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl> wrote: > On Fri, 18 Jul 1997, Rogier Wolff wrote: > > Oh. In europe our laws are pretty clear about this. No matter what the > > licence is that that comes with the product, you have the right to > > reverse engineer the product for the purpose of making something > > compatible with the product. > > > > Note that you may not be allowed to reverse engineer for the purpose > > of making a cometing product. > > You are allowed to reverse engineer the product, write an interface > docs AND make it public. And anyone else is free to make a competing > product based solely on the docs.
This is almost exactly what a lot of clone makers did in the past when they wanted to make IBM PC clones. IBM would not let anyone have their BIOS, which was very necessary to the production of a PC clone, so they would hire some coder to reverse engineer the BIOS and document it's API. That guy would hand the clone maker the api document and then be removed from the rest of the process, so the clone maker then had a "clean" documented API, which they then hired some other coder to implement. Finally they had thier own BIOS they could slap in their clone machine and everyone was happy except IBM. As time went on, there were companies that just did this and thats how we just have a few BIOS makers and no one makes their own BIOS anymore.
I beleive it would be quite impossible to forbid anyone from coding their own API to interface with I2O. If it were, IBM would have crushed the PC clone makers under a ton of litigation, since at that time, they certainly would have had the resources to do so (still do I might add). Of course that was a time before everyone got sue-happy.
I do think that I2O will probably become a standard, simply because M$ has too much influence on the hardware industry. After all, if M$ went under, what would keep people from buying cheap PC hardware if the glitziest OS ran on say a DEC alpha? Clone makers have a vested interest in keeping M$ going after all. How else can you explain the 2 or 3 wasted keys on your new M$ compatible keyboard? It's also no accident that M$ stuff needs more and more resources as time goes on. The automakers called it planned obsolecense, and it worked pretty damn well for them too.
- Steve ----- Of course there's always industrial spying to fall back on.
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