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What are some of the benefits that we could see with it? Well:
-Bare metal hypervisors. Imagine being able to boot up linux and windows side-by-side and not have to worry about setting up any sort of virtual machine. You could switch between the two using a keyboard combo. Or even being able to setup a COW copy of windows so cleaning up your mom's copy of windows is as easy as hitting a few keys and setting it back to a known clean state...

Oh, like ESXi? No, wait, you said no virtual machine... wait, what? Hypervisor = Virtual machine control system.

Your "insta-clean" windows can be accomplished with drive imaging, or "freezing".

-Improved device support. Devices could use a standardised interface on the "bios" level so that windows/linux/osx would just need a simple driver layer to talk to the device. Device manufacturers could provide what basically amounts to a shim to load into the UEFI which provides the mapping between the actual device and the standardised hardware interface. Of course this may run into issues such as non-standard or extended features but this could be taken care of with extensible interfaces.

Are you advocating an OS-independent version of DirectX for bare metal? Or are you describing how BIOS already operates?

In short, either you have no idea what you're talking about, or you're simply unaware that what you're describing is already in existence (and, indeed, is the way it already works).

Why not try out the Northtec Gecko UMPC? http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=5&ArticleID=554 I have bought a rebranded one here in the Philippines named the Deep Blue H1 UMPC It suits my needs very nicely (with my job, I need to bring practically my laptop almost anywhere to access linux servers on call). With 1Gb RAM and a 40Gb harddisk - it is basically priced the same as a eeePC 4G here. And I love the 4.5 hours battery life - works as advertised.

For reference, see The Onion reference, "... We're doing five blades". (Rough language. If you're at a school maybe NSFW). From February, 2004. For the record, the Gillette Fusion with five blades and two lubricating strips was introduced in early 2006.

Hilarious though:

Here's the report from Engineering. Someone put it in the bathroom: I want to wipe my a?? with it. They don't tell me what to invent--I tell them. And I'm telling them to stick two more blades in there. I don't care how. Make the blades so thin they're invisible. Put some on the handle. I don't care if they have to cram the fifth blade in perpendicular to the other four, just do it!

You're taking the "safety" part of "safety razor" too literally, grandma. Cut the strings and soar. Let's hit it. Let's roll. This is our chance to make razor history. Let's dream big. All you have to do is say that five blades can happen, and it will happen. If you aren't on board, then .... you. And if you're on the board, then .... you and your father. Hey, if I'm the only one who'll take risks, I'm sure as hell happy to hog all the glory when the five-blade razor becomes the shaving tool for the U.S. of "this is how we shave now" A.

People said we couldn't go to three. It'll cost a fortune to manufacture, they said. Well, we did it. Now some egghead in a lab is screaming "Five's crazy?" Well, perhaps he'd be more comfortable in the labs at Norelco, working on #### electrics. Rotary blades, my white #!

I'm a big AMD fan but three cores are barely better than two. Buy it anyway - AMD needs to live if the computer market is to be bearable at all in ten years. Via makes some interesting stuff too - and they're not afraid to cut the watts and make them small. You can do some very neat stuff with a low watt CPU on a small board.

It doesn't take a great deal of insight to see we're going to 8 cores per processor on the desktop sometime in the next few years. Dual 16 core processors will happen within ten if competition keeps the pressure up. Personally I don't care if every core is on a separate slab of silicon as long as they integrate in the package well. Yields are better that way I imagine. Somebody tell them to get the watts down. Electricity is mostly made from CO2 emissions:

PCs worldwide consume about 80 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity every year.

No, do not buy anything made by VIA. Mini-ITX is great, but I just got burned by VIA's southbridge DMA bug that they have not fixed in THREE years, nor do they make any attempt at looking like they care. Do yourself a favor and buy a Mini-ITX board, any board, without VIA chips on it.

Here it is, in all 21 pages of glory starting back in 2004: http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.aspx?catid=28&threadid=60131&STARTPAGE=21&enterthread=y

For the EPIA-MII VIA supply a "fastboot" BIOS, there are seperate BIOS images depending on what device you want to boot off. Using their BIOS along with a compact flash->IDE adapter and a little kernel optimisation you can have a command prompt in around 4 seconds from power on. My aim was to have the system in a gui (using DirectFB) in under 10 seconds but at present I'm looking at around 6-7.

The system was using grub, a custom built kernel and Busybox.

I write this from my fanless eden 600 mhz running debian and icewm. I bought it 1,5 years ago because;
* Fanless
* 2 eth-ports
* x86 compatible.

My plan was to use it as a silent firewall in front of my regular home desktop. But soon I didn't care to start the "fat desktop" and found myself logging in to X to surf the web.
Sure, it's no where near as fast as modern desktops. But at home i mostly just read my gmail and surf check things up on the net. It's a nice feeling to have a browser available 24/7 in my small apartment - and it's dead silent when the HD spins down.
As a matter of fact, today I got my 8gb SSD drive to make it completely silent!
Bu be warned - VIA has a BAD track record in open linux support and buggy bioses and so on, read on http://forums.viaarena.com/categories.aspx?catid=2 8&entercat=y

I doubt people on slashdot would ever spill stuff, but normal people might.

Yeah, nerds, geeks and IT choads have a reputation for cleanliness and orderliness.

Loser

MacLoser

A third loser

TEH WINNAR!!1

Ok, that last one is actually a post-Katrina pic. But still -- gimme a fucking break with the slash elitism.
Judging by the slashdotters I know, most people on slashdot live like animals.

I myself own an oldskool Via C3, so I'm not too much into this issue anyways ;) Come to think of it, the Via naming scheme might make sense maybe? At least they have a clarifying list :)

Ahem...

ATI Linux Page
nVidia Linux Page
IBM Linux Drivers (for a random chipset)
VIA Linux Drivers (for a random chipset)

...and your point was?

I've got an EPIA 800 board which is supposed to work as a NAS/print/web server.

It locks up every now and them. Even when it's not under any particular load. My impression is that it's got a hardware bug and VIA are incompetent since they've been unable to fix it as the problem exists in various EPIA models.

I've been looking for an alternative since no way I'm going to buy another EPIA ever again. Pathetic, low-performance boards with issues.

See http://forums.viaarena.com/categories.aspx?catid=2 8&entercat=y if you care. Look for "hang", "dma" and "lock"

Heres the thread dated from Fri Sep 17, 2004 19:14.

Pain/Suffering

I'd rather buy from VIA, who provide open source drivers for their hardware, than Asus, who are disparaging about open source.

Given that a Pentium II 200MHz can handle RAID-5 without pulling a sweat (I have some seriously obsolete servers running at work), CPU speed really isn't much of an issue for me.

As for the C3 being out of date, well, yes, that's why there's the VIA C7, which looks like it may leapfrog the Pentium-M in CPU power per watt. http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=5&Arti cleID=402

• low power requirements
  
• honkingly big disks
  
• a very fast LAN
  
• great IO bandwidth
  

• It uses less than 20W at idle, 72 at start (max).
  
• Its cool/quiet.
  
• It only has 2 IDE channels and a max of two PCI cards (using a splitter that permits two PCI cards into the Mini-ITX's single PCI slot). Depending on what other cards you want to plug in, this could be a drawback. Personally I use the IDE channels for a disk and DVD, and plug the other disk into Firewire.
  
• IO bandwidth is so-so
  
• there are issues with DMA on the M and MIIs that via is only just getting around to fixing.
  
• standard Mini-ITX cases are built for small size - many only support a single laptop drive. Those that do support normal HDDs only fit one. You need to either use a non-std case or have a second case for your drives.
  
• The standard power supplies with those cases are usually 60 or 80W. Thats not enough to run a lot of peripherals, with problems most often showing a boot.
  

I can only speak for the M10000. Mine has been up since powered on, serving files and mail under moderate load. 458 days uptime and counting. The only stability issue I know of for this motherboard is it locks up under extended DMA (i.e. simultaneously record & playback for 1/2 hour in MythTV). Apparently there's finally a a fix for this. The tiny power draw is just fantastic; low power bills and it stays up for hours even on my crappy UPS.

I'm installing one with a DC-DC converter in my car this week. It looks high quality. We'll see...

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=22&DSC at=155&DCatType=3

Well, there is a lot done by via toward linux and open source.
More than other at least.

There are drivers that are released, some are even free and concern their graphic adapters.
I think this is part of one of their strategy which is to take a big part of the asian market where there is a demand for low cost low end solutions.
They are also very interrested in low energy solutions for the same reasons.

I kinda think they are wiser than some other who rely on selling high end more power hungry closed solutions in a world where oil price and therefore electricity prices are going to rise.

I go weekly there:
http://www.viaarena.com/
to find infos about this very interresting company. They even have tutorials for installing their new drivers on Mandriva and Fedora over there.

Nope, I don't have shares or anything.

I've got a M10000 in a TranquilPC case and it is lovely when booting diskless, almost silent apart from a very quiet hiss when the screen repaints.

But it's not stable and I think it's a hardware bug that VIA cannot patch. After a while (varying randomly from 10 minutes to 2 days) it will hang, sometimes with the hard drive light on. There's a massive thread on the VIA LInux forums at http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.aspx?catid= 28&threadid=60131&enterthread=y that's been going for years and VIA have not responded very well.

On the other hand I have a p4-itx board as a server with a Celeron 2GHz with one big Zalman fan and heatsink and that's rock solid so I'm using that as a desktop while I save up for Mac-mini.

and there's no support for their cards on linux (offical or Xfree).

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=420&OS ID=20&CatID=2260&SubCatID=110
http://xfree86.org/4.5.0/RELNOTES4.html#43
http://sourceforge.net/projects/unichrome

VIA EPIA and see link above for normal PC. Sigh.

The machine has had related problems with earlier 2.6 kernels. It seems that Linux is making use of hardware more and more aggressively, and 2.6 will tell flaky hardware more easily. I can't really blame ReiserFS because the problem was obviously related to that particular hardware, but I also had a couple of JFS partitions that were intact, so at least in this case JFS is more robust.

Other than that, I've had very few problems with the 2.6 series. There were some problems with DVD writing in early releases; I had some DVDs written in 2.6.1 that were only readable with the same kernel :)

I'd say go for it, you can always go back to 2.4 if things break. Oh, and make backups :)

Go to ViaArena. Click on "Open Source", and go from there. Source for drivers for their Ethernet and graphics chips is provided.

"As seen on TechTV"

The Millenium Falcon PC

http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/falcon-itx/

and

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=5&Arti cleID=51&P=1

I just downloaded their drivers and they seem to include everything you need for 2D, 3D and mpeg2 decoding.

kernel 2.6 drivers

It's nice to see a company actually releasing useful open source drivers.

Although the boards are marketed towards users who build machines that are always left on, they skimped on some obvious features needed by most users in this market.

I created a mythtv box from an EPIA MII12000 (1.2GHz). I put it into a georgeous Silverstone LC06 case. I switched the fans with silent ones, chose silent optical/HD drives. The end result is just awesome. In fact the 12000 is way overpowered for what I am doing - thanks to onboard encoding in the Hauppauge PVR card I use, and decoding in the EPIA motherboard - and the CPU sits at 10% most of the time. The 800MHz CPU would have been a better pick, and then I would have had less heat = 1 less and slower fans.

Thats the good side...

Behind the scenes there were months of trying to debug random crashes. There is a known issue in the DMA on the MII12000 and others. VIA have refused (scroll to bottom) to respond, even on bulletin boards where they often frequent. They know about the problem because they have fixed in windows driver updates released late last year.

There was a happy ending, for me anyway. If I rebuilt the kernel with CPUFREQ off and only i386 code (a real pain with Fedora Core 3 because it defaults to i686) then everything seems stable.

But I have serious reservations about their support for linux, and would have reservations about dealing with them again.

I created a mythtv box from an EPIA MII12000 (1.2GHz). I put it into a georgeous Silverstone LC06 case. I switched the fans with silent ones, chose silent optical/HD drives. The end result is just awesome. In fact the 12000 is way overpowered for what I am doing - thanks to onboard encoding in the Hauppauge PVR card I use, and decoding in the EPIA motherboard - and the CPU sits at 10% most of the time. The 800MHz CPU would have been a better pick, and then I would have had less heat = 1 less and slower fans.

Thats the good side...

Behind the scenes there were months of trying to debug random crashes. There is a known issue in the DMA on the MII12000 and others. VIA have refused (scroll to bottom) to respond, even on bulletin boards where they often frequent. They know about the problem because they have fixed in windows driver updates released late last year.

There was a happy ending, for me anyway. If I rebuilt the kernel with CPUFREQ off and only i386 code (a real pain with Fedora Core 3 because it defaults to i686) then everything seems stable.

But I have serious reservations about their support for linux, and would have reservations about dealing with them again.

I created a mythtv box from an EPIA MII12000 (1.2GHz). I put it into a georgeous Silverstone LC06 case. I switched the fans with silent ones, chose silent optical/HD drives. The end result is just awesome. In fact the 12000 is way overpowered for what I am doing - thanks to onboard encoding in the Hauppauge PVR card I use, and decoding in the EPIA motherboard - and the CPU sits at 10% most of the time. The 800MHz CPU would have been a better pick, and then I would have had less heat = 1 less and slower fans.

Thats the good side...

Behind the scenes there were months of trying to debug random crashes. There is a known issue in the DMA on the MII12000 and others. VIA have refused (scroll to bottom) to respond, even on bulletin boards where they often frequent. They know about the problem because they have fixed in windows driver updates released late last year.

There was a happy ending, for me anyway. If I rebuilt the kernel with CPUFREQ off and only i386 code (a real pain with Fedora Core 3 because it defaults to i686) then everything seems stable.

But I have serious reservations about their support for linux, and would have reservations about dealing with them again.

I worked on a product in the early 90's running on Unix. We supported a large number of different unixii, placing an enormous build, test, develop load that just should not have been there.

Our build script would test the version of unix for all sorts of bugs unique to each type (being system s/w, these bugs impacted us hugely). Our source and makefiles where littered with ifdefs to get around them on different systems.

We are well on the way to heading down the same path now. Release systems are different (.rpm?, .deb? etc), OS's are subtly different - system files move, boot scripts are organised differently.

Windows isn't perfect - there have been lots of changes as time moved on (e.g. registry, APIs, MSIs etc) but my app written for 9x still installs and runs on XP. Thats pretty impressive.

Forking is bad, bad, bad. It might not be the death of linux (there's always geeks like us who run it, and solid use cases in corporates) but its an impediment to development, to products, to consumer acceptance.

For example - I was just on a group where VIA were lambasted for only releasing some drivers for about a dozen varieties/versions/installers of linux. Cmon - thats a major effort and I take my hat off to them. But its no-where good enough to cover the broad scope that you need, and indeed my FC3 machine was not in the list.

Dont fork.

The M and MII boards have well documented DMA issues There have been many attempts to contact VIA to discuss these, all have been actively ignored (we are pretty sure they are getting the messages).

What concerns me is that the problem has been fixed in windows, but Via wont even talk to linux people about it. That indicates a certain lack of interest in the linuxworld that bodes badly should problems arise with these new mobos. I would be very circumspect about picking up another mobo from them unless I was sure I wouldn't need support.

Just one jilted dudes opinion.

The previous CL266 based boards suffer from hangup when too much traffic flows thru the DMA system
(see http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.aspx?catid= 28&threadid=60131&enterthread=y/ for info - let's hope the new chip improves on this. Though VIA claim to support LINUX they have not released any open source drivers (and insist on providing patches against outdated distributions) nor will they release any information for FOSS developers (the UNICHROME project relies on trial and error to develop drivers) . Their support on their forum is abysmal (see http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.aspx?catid= 32&threadid=60036&enterthread=y/ )

The previous CL266 based boards suffer from hangup when too much traffic flows thru the DMA system
(see http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.aspx?catid= 28&threadid=60131&enterthread=y/ for info - let's hope the new chip improves on this. Though VIA claim to support LINUX they have not released any open source drivers (and insist on providing patches against outdated distributions) nor will they release any information for FOSS developers (the UNICHROME project relies on trial and error to develop drivers) . Their support on their forum is abysmal (see http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.aspx?catid= 32&threadid=60036&enterthread=y/ )

go have a look at http://forums.viaarena.com/messageview.cfm?catid=3 2&threadid=63466&enterthread=y/ and see the reputation that Via products have - the EPIA series had (possibly still do) problems with concurrent DMA accesses - the board would lock up; Via introduced an updated BIOS (to allow screen sizes suitable for HDTV) which locked up many boards - numerous other problems let alone their refusal to deal with open source software

I think VIA is probably one of the more opensource friendly hardware manufacturers. You'll probably get very decent documentation for almost any of their chipsets here. What you get from there is a reference implimentation of a driver, and there is a link to where you get datasheets on there as well. I've still yet to hear back from ATI after requesting just the NDA, never mind the documentation. I wouldn't even waste my time inquiring about nVidia.

The Xenarc screens are supposed to be better than the Lilliput screens FWIW. I've purchased a 7inch version with vid capability as well as VGA for under $400 off of EBAY.

I've been looking into this in order to monitor what's going on with my car's standalone EFI system. Since that EFI system's software allows me to build "dashboards" I can do LOTS of interesting displays. I have been collecting URLs and you can see pics of other's progress and discussion here -> http://forum.aempower.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?t=9604

Some URLs I've collected in no distinct order or organization:

http://www.logisysus.com/catalog/product_info.php? cPath=74&products_id=189
http://logisysus.com/catalog/product_info.php?prod ucts_id=334
http://www.kingyoung.com.tw/s620.htm
http://littlepc.com/
http://www.diamondsystems.com/
http://www.viaarena.com/
http://www.media-car.fr.st/
http://www.everythingusb.com/hardware/index/Griffi n_RadioSHARK_AM-FM_Radio.htm
http://www.xmradio.com/xmpcr/ (I bought one, have added optical output, and have purchased TimeTrax!)
http://www.hauppauge.com/html/wintvpvr usb_datashee t.htm> (have one on the way, thanks EBAY!)
http://store.karpc.com/cat-LCD-Touch-Screen--lcdmo nitor.htm
http://www.mp3car.com/
http://www.soundblaster.com/products/audigy2NX/
http://www.carbotpc.com/products/
http://www.powerstream.com/DC_PC.htm
http://www.powerstream.com/mini-itx.htm
http://www.media-car.fr.st/
http://drivesoft.net/
http://www.gnetcanada.com/
http://www.lighttek.com/talisman.htm
http://skylab.org/~chugga/mpegbox/MPBS1/
http://www.compucar.be.tf/
http://www.autonode.com/ig710specs.html?
http://www.trc12volt.com/
http://www.intraplexcorp.com/tx3.asp
http://www.sfftech.com/
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/
http://www.dashmatics.com/forum/faq.php

Hopefully some of those will be of help to others considering this sort of thing, I'd be interested in working with others to research this! My plans are to mock up something with the touchscreen and front-end software working with the WINTV, XM PCR, my MP3 collection, GPS mapping, the RLTC software, and my AEM datalogging software. IF it works well (or even halfway well) THEN I'll buy hardware to put IN the car. No sense spending the money if the interface turns out to suck or be too distracting while driving. I'll likely be able to play DVDs too but honestly that's pretty se

All good, but Stay AWAY FROM THE BETA DRIVERS!!

I've just had to reinstall everything over the weekend because the 320b version of the IDE drivers would just not uninstall. (the system would freeze as soon as I would dare try to touch the main dll)

Here's the story

Bah. FUD. Go here to see more info. Also, there is support for the decoder specifically built into MythTV and it works very well.

Perhaps they discovered a license violation and took it down to prevent a lawsuit.

Ok, the binaries are at http://padlocksl.viaarena.com/. They have downloads for Win NT/2k and RH Linux 9.0. Maybe some debs can be made from them. :-) Still can't get to the sources. :-(

even though Human_USB posted the exact same address as in the article I decided that it should have been a link...

so here ya go http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=401


wish I hadn't used up all my mod points... this is an obvious ploy for karma

Also, off topic but amusing, when I was browsing around their site for more information I found this: http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=306

It's really easy to compile Padlock on Mandrake 9.2. First install libqt3-devel, the QT deveoper package. Then, call /usr/lib/qt3/bin/qmake and make, that's all.

Never mind. Stupid little me found the link _on the front page_ at last.. PadLockSL.src.zip[viaarena.com]...

for those that don't want to fill out the questionnaire

Windows XP Version

Red Hat Verion 9.0

Installation Guide

User Guide

for those that don't want to fill out the questionnaire

Windows XP Version

Red Hat Verion 9.0

Installation Guide

User Guide

for those that don't want to fill out the questionnaire

Windows XP Version

Red Hat Verion 9.0

Installation Guide

User Guide

for those that don't want to fill out the questionnaire

Windows XP Version

Red Hat Verion 9.0

Installation Guide

User Guide

I bet this guy and this guy and this guy (etc, etc, etc) never had any problems either.
Good for you that your windows box ownz. We all envy joo and your r0x0ring Dell!
Especially this guy!!!

On hunting around, I found the EPIA Linux Howto, which is a January 2004 publication (apparently), and fairly nifty. In the chapter on video support, the editor interjects with a clarifying comment about hardware MPEG support, stating, "The source code is available to large OEM customers under NDA/licensing agreements. It is not available to end-users." Strike one for open source.

The video drivers for EPIA-M boards can be downloaded from their CLE266 Linuxpage. There is a note about source code at the bottom of this page. They say the following about full source code access: "Users need to sign Binary License Agreement (BLA) and Source Code Addendum (SCABLA) to obtain the source. Typically, only requests from companies developing product for sale will be approved." Strike two for open source.

But there's a more limited source release available, apparently, and for that you need to go to the VIA Open Source Developer's Data Request Form. Here you will be warmly greeted with the following notice, accompanied by a honking great form full of mandatory personal information fields.

VIA want to make available code and other resources to appropriate open source developers. In order to be accepted into the programme and have downloads made available, requests must be made via this form.

Once the form is complete, has been submitted and reviewed, your application may be approved. If successful you will receive an e-mail to the address specified by you on this form. This mail must be responded to otherwise your access will not be enabled.

VIA's open source support is weak at best. Maybe there are good reasons why they are obliged to put obstacles in the way of everything, rather than just providing the damn code, but their pitch as given leaves me pretty cold. I like their stuff, but I'm sick of half-baked software support.

On hunting around, I found the EPIA Linux Howto, which is a January 2004 publication (apparently), and fairly nifty. In the chapter on video support, the editor interjects with a clarifying comment about hardware MPEG support, stating, "The source code is available to large OEM customers under NDA/licensing agreements. It is not available to end-users." Strike one for open source.

The video drivers for EPIA-M boards can be downloaded from their CLE266 Linuxpage. There is a note about source code at the bottom of this page. They say the following about full source code access: "Users need to sign Binary License Agreement (BLA) and Source Code Addendum (SCABLA) to obtain the source. Typically, only requests from companies developing product for sale will be approved." Strike two for open source.

But there's a more limited source release available, apparently, and for that you need to go to the VIA Open Source Developer's Data Request Form. Here you will be warmly greeted with the following notice, accompanied by a honking great form full of mandatory personal information fields.

VIA want to make available code and other resources to appropriate open source developers. In order to be accepted into the programme and have downloads made available, requests must be made via this form.

Once the form is complete, has been submitted and reviewed, your application may be approved. If successful you will receive an e-mail to the address specified by you on this form. This mail must be responded to otherwise your access will not be enabled.

VIA's open source support is weak at best. Maybe there are good reasons why they are obliged to put obstacles in the way of everything, rather than just providing the damn code, but their pitch as given leaves me pretty cold. I like their stuff, but I'm sick of half-baked software support.

On hunting around, I found the EPIA Linux Howto, which is a January 2004 publication (apparently), and fairly nifty. In the chapter on video support, the editor interjects with a clarifying comment about hardware MPEG support, stating, "The source code is available to large OEM customers under NDA/licensing agreements. It is not available to end-users." Strike one for open source.

The video drivers for EPIA-M boards can be downloaded from their CLE266 Linuxpage. There is a note about source code at the bottom of this page. They say the following about full source code access: "Users need to sign Binary License Agreement (BLA) and Source Code Addendum (SCABLA) to obtain the source. Typically, only requests from companies developing product for sale will be approved." Strike two for open source.

But there's a more limited source release available, apparently, and for that you need to go to the VIA Open Source Developer's Data Request Form. Here you will be warmly greeted with the following notice, accompanied by a honking great form full of mandatory personal information fields.

VIA want to make available code and other resources to appropriate open source developers. In order to be accepted into the programme and have downloads made available, requests must be made via this form.

Once the form is complete, has been submitted and reviewed, your application may be approved. If successful you will receive an e-mail to the address specified by you on this form. This mail must be responded to otherwise your access will not be enabled.

VIA's open source support is weak at best. Maybe there are good reasons why they are obliged to put obstacles in the way of everything, rather than just providing the damn code, but their pitch as given leaves me pretty cold. I like their stuff, but I'm sick of half-baked software support.