[PLUG] Fedora or Red Hat (or OSX)

[Kyle Hayes]

On Friday 12 December 2003 09:08, Carla Schroder wrote:
> In other words, they're more retarded that I thought, because:
>
> 1. their products need software drivers to work at all
> 2. good drivers and docs = less cranky customers pestering tech support,
> and maybe even increased sales
> 3. one nice *nix tarball feeds every single Linux, BSD, and Unix. Nice
> package maintainers roll them into handy binary packages for those who
> prefer such
> 4. But each winduhs - 9x, NT, ME, 2000, and XP- needs its own binary
> driver. Which often must be modified because the latest Service Pack
> hoses it. Plus we all know how upgrading to the next winduhs means
> either waving bye to many of your peripherals, or spending wads of
> money on new hardware. But that's OK, somehow
> 5. Linux developers are valiantly reverse-engineering and writing
> drivers anyway. But supporting this free labor pool with specs and
> product is, somehow, Wrong.

I think it is a tad more complicated than that.

A lot of hardware needs some sort of driver to work properly (things like hard 
disks etc. may not).  The time cost of the software is part of the time cost 
of bringing the product to market.  Having worked for a while in a company 
that had real hardware products, I know that the software often delayed 
things dangerously.  It's hard to write the drivers when you don't have 
working hardware.  But, once the hardware is working the pressure is on to 
ship so that your product it out there before everyone else's. 

If your product is best, but it is one month later than a competitor's 
product, you might as well start dumping the existing hardware on eBay.  
You'll never get the end shelves in the stores, the front pages of the adds 
etc.  You're too late.

This time pressure leads to people buying all kinds of Windows driver kits 
that "do all the work for you" (tm), copy-and-paste coding etc.  Everything 
bad that you can do with code is done and done frequently to chase the goal 
of time to market.  It is ugly.

As to point 5, that seems reasonable until you realize that most hardware is 
made up of the same chipsets and other components off the shelf.  Take Wlan 
cards.  There are only a half-dozen chipsets that are widely used.  There are 
only a half-dozen CardBus chipsets (maybe not even that many).  There are 
only a few radio chips.  So, you've really only got a few different cards, 
but all from different manufacturers etc.  They all think they are protecting 
something by frobbing bits and moving ports around.  To them, the _only_ 
thing that they see as "intellectual capital" is the collection of specs.  
Nearly everything else is off the shelf.

A huge amount of hardware is basically put together from a relatively small 
number of parts.  If you want to build a modem, there's only a few chipsets 
that are decent and cheap.  This means that the vast majority of cards and 
finished products out there are really very little different from each other.  
Skimping on paint, thinner boards, cheaper surface mount resistors etc. is 
how those companies make their margins.  Companies will do anything to remove 
just one component.  Who cares if you have to invert all the bits and feed 
everything backwards at 1/3 the bus speed?  This is why there are different 
drivers.

It's a weird world, but if you dig enough, some of it becomes comprehensible. 
Not that I agree with the way hardware companies think or behave, but it is 
more comprehensible.  You have to remember that the margins on most hardware 
is so rediculously small that it is amazing that they can make it at all.  
There is _very_ little money spent on actual research at most places.

It doesn't help the Linux world and will not until Linux represents a 
significant percentage of sales.  I think that a couple of premium brands 
would have realized that they could charge a significant price difference for 
"works with Linux" products, but they haven't clued in yet.

Time for my nap.

Best,
Kyle