Slashdot Mirror
USB Forum Becomes Too Greedy?
I just saw this on the Linux USB Mailing List: Up until a few days ago all the class specification documents were available for anyone for free. Those classes are important for the Linux USB development. It appears now, after the USB group got the Slashdot beany award, that the access for those documents is now restricted to members only, which are required to pay $2,500 per year. Is this just a coincidence? You can test it here.
Yes.
http://www.geocities.com/usb_dev/.
treke asks:
What restrictions were placed on redistribution by people who have already gotten their hands on the specs?
As far as I know, as long as you aren't a member, no restrictions were added or waived. That means it's covered under normal copyright law. You can't redistribute the spec, but you can read it, write a book about it, and distribute the book anyway you want. Check the computer section of your book store, at least 10% of those books are just rehashing copyrighted specifications or documentation.
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Open mind, insert foot.
On the Developer Site, there is a link labeled USB Device Class Specifications. Immediately underneath, it says: (USB-IF member username and password required). If you click on the link, it asks for a username and password. Therefore, it is locked on the developer side.
If you know of an official link to the Device Class Specifications on the USB site that is not locked, please post it here and to the Linux-USB mailing list.
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Open mind, insert foot.
>Apple killed firewire -- nobody needed to help.
Firewire, aka IEEE 1394, is hardly dead. Pretty much all HDTV/DTV systems use it to communicate between receivers and decoders. It's just not used a lot on PCs is all.
"Tomorrow's forecast: a few sprinkles of genius with a chance of doom!" - Stewie Griffin
I was in the middle of mirroring the documentation, and suddenly www.usb.org is unpingable. I assume this is because someone over on their end noticed the massive hard drive churning, and the flood of wget clients in the server logs. If this is actually the result of some losers DOS attack I'm going to be annoyed.
They're still unpingable, but responding to web requests again. False alarm, I suppose their firewall and their current slashdotting threw me off.
You probably are right about why they are hiding those specs. But why not use a publically available and tested encryption algorithm instead? I, at least, would feel a lot more comfortable with that...
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
The man makes a good point. FreeBSD and OpenBSD and all the other variants would be left out in the cold with this plan. We have to remember that Linux does not live alone in the world as free OSes go.
Also, it begs another question. How much of the core development of the Linux operating system does the community want to have taken over by the Linux corporations? One bad corporate citizen could play heck with the order of things.
Keeping it open in the hands of the hobbyists and the coders on a crusade is the only way to keep the core of the OS out of reach of exploitation.
ACK
Hmmm... let's tweak this a bit, and see what we get.
I am an expert in monetarist economics, with a particular emphasis on the politics and philosophies of Milton Friedman, and his latter-day successor in the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher.
The whole "intellectual-property" and "copyright extension" phenomenon troubles me somewhat as an economist, so I felt I had to submit my opinions on what is obviously a fundamentally flawed economic model.
This DCMA case is a prime example. Once again, the cheapskates in the intellectual-property community begrudge someone making a profit off of product quality and service as opposed to artifical notions of "property" -- they seem to expect a free lunch. Well, as my economics professor always used to say, "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch".
What these crypto-fascist intellectual-property proponents don't seem to realise, is that the very system they promote is nothing more than the capitalist system they despise, but with a few extra nasty gotchas bolted on. If Marx were alive today, he would recognise "intellectual property" for what it is - an attempt by the owners of capital to extract more value from the labour of the proletariat without actually allowing them to see the excess value they produced
For example: you do "work for hire" on a project which someone else holds the "copyright" to, they continue to get paid in good old fashioned United States dollars long after you've been let go. Try taking that to your local BMW dealership and see how far it gets you.
So in a nutshell, intellectual-property is exactly like open-source (from the "big business" point of view), except that the developer works for nothing.
In my book, profiting from "intellectual property" produced by others is the same as being a slaveowner. For this reason alone intellectual-property must be stopped, by Federal Law if need be.
Much better, don't you think?
Jay (=
Man, I can't wait. Since RedHat releases everything THEY write as OpenSource, reverse engineering will be VERY easy! I'll just ... READ THE DAMED SOURCE!
Honestly, why do you come to SlashDot when you're allready smoking crack?
Bad Mojo
Bad Mojo
"If you can't win by reason, go for volume." -- Calvin
It seems unlikely to me, that they are really trying to keep the specs themselves under wraps in the long run.
So, I wouldn't jump to conclusions. Still, whatever the reasons for it, I hope this policy gets reversed because it does seem, ultimately, short sighted and harmful to the standard itself.
Sadly, this is a card that costs $200, as it's more of an industrial-strength info-kiosk/server type device than a consumer DVD decoder card. And they're still refusing to do even binary drivers or an unencrypted Linux file player for the Hollywood Plus out of fear that it would break their agreement with DVDCCA or be used to play deCSS'd DVDs, respectively.
Also somewhat annoying is the fact that when someone asked about BeOS drivers in the Linux group (a perfectly legitimate question, IMO), Marshall Goldberg, their marketing director, replied, "I'm sorry, but this is the Linux area, not the BeOS area." (And there isn't a BeOS area on their server.)
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Firewire hasn't gotten the support it probably deserved on its technical merits. Apparently Apple, in its infinite wisdom (chuckle), tried to require licensing fees from every manufacturer and slowed its adoption. Then Intel dropped support for it in its 810, 820, 840 chipsets. But technically I think it's clearly superior to USB. I use firewire to talk to my Sony digital video camera and can count the problems I've had on one hand. I've tried to use USB, on the other hand, and finally gave up due to all the headaches to get it to work reliably (and this with just a couple simple devices like a mouse and keyboard).
Here is a quick USB - Firewire comparison:
FireWire has many advantages over other digital interfaces. It has already replaced SCSI on the new Apple iMacs G3s, and G4s, and FireWire is much more user-friendly for connecting devices than SCSI. Dell, Gateway, and Compaq have also released machines that rely on FireWire for attaching high-speed peripherals. Although USB is a great low-cost solution for connecting keyboards and other low-speed peripherals, it doesn't have the speed for multimedia uses. Maximum speed for USB is 12 megabits per second, compared to FireWire at 400 megabits per second. PCI is currently faster than FireWire, at 1 gigabit per second, but plans are already in the works for a FireWire that will be as fast and will of course have the ease of use and other advantages of the current FireWire. FireWire cables can be up to 15 feet long and they have either two 6-pin connectors, for data and power, or one 6-pin and one 4-pin connector for the data-only cables. Up to 63 devices can be connected to a FirePower network. Products currently using FireWire include video camcorders, digital cameras, digital video capturing and editing equipment, hard drives, DAT drives, CD drives, zip drives, ORB drives, MO (magneto optical) drives, and printers
Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
What does most of this dead technology have in common? At one point or another, it was closed off.
This point is right on. I understand the USB Forum wants a few quick bucks for their specs, but are they ignoring the long view? If their USB specs were free (or better yet they wrote reference code for USB device drivers), there would be more software support for USB. USB would wind itself into many operating systems and the customer pool for USB hardware would grow!
What am I not understanding?
cpeterso
Why doesn't one of the big boys license this information for use within its developers? Shouldn't these companies be supporting the development of the product they sell? I mean i would think Redhat, Caldera, or Corel would be happy to license this information for a third party to develop support or provide drivers. Microsoft provides information in SDK's and DDK's that work very well. Why complain about someone trying to controll there standard. Why not just get support for it. Just like ISO9000, it is a pain in the ass to manage according to those standards, and you pay for that. But your clients expect a quality of service and workmanship that comes about from being ISO9000 certified. So what is the big deal about being USB certified or paying for the information that the standardization group is working on and coordinating on. Again, if you don't like USB. Then work on standardizing another technology! Do the footwork instead of simply just trying to get access into someone elses! Long live linux, but long live USB. Its been the best thing since sliced bread!! Nothing like having a scanner, digital camera, digital mp3 player, snappy cam, video camera and printer all hubed in through USB and working without snagging every IRQ you got! blessed technology :) Sure firewire is fast as hell, and USB's new revision is fast as hell too.. but you have to pay for that also.
Although it smacks of corporate greediness, and it is apparent that Linux developers who work for free can't join the members list, why can't the corporate Linux companies, such as Red Hat, Caldera or VA Linux systems join, and make their copies of the specifications available to developers. There may be copyright issues, but if the USB developers work "for" one of these companies, then surely there is no problem. The end-result would still be GPLed, and available to all, it's just a nominal shift in who you are working for.
Linux has a number of high-profile companies now, and it's in their interests to ensure the best hardware compatibility for their distributions. $2500 is a small price to pay for that from their point of view, surely.
-anil-
Humm ? Who is going to pay their $2500 a year. Or the people who dont want to work for a Linux vendor but would like to spend their spare time fiddling with a USB camera or other widget ?
Alan
Almost fair points :)
But not so. Sure the effect of GPL et al is to reduce the amounts of money flying around - because someone can re-"sell" it on for free if they want. OTOH you can cover costs of CDs, which is fair enough; but the main thing is that you can make loads of dough off related services instead - eg support, contracting / configuring, whatever.
Here's an example:
Last year I produced a perl script. It took 15 minutes, from 10 mins' finding someone else's modules and 1 minute editing them to do what I wanted and about 4 mins' testing. As a result a multi-megabuck deal went through that probably wouldn't have otherwise.
Now how much was that script *worth*? (And secondarily, how is that amount related to what I got for it, ie absolute zip?)
Methinks "worth" is one thing that open-source deals with; something like eg Apache is worth a LOT. OTOH the idea of "what someone can be suckered into paying for it" is what the commercial scene is all about.
Me, I'd prefer to produce a valuable, useful, high-quality application or utility, rather than any amount of generated code managed by a "quality" system, any day. And I have the right and the choice to do so if I want.
~Tim
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Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
Working on an opensourceproject is a bit like
charity, in the way that it all benefits the
users and the community.
You get paid by respect, just like when doing
work for charity, except that doing opensource-work gives you a better chance of
being respected as a skilled hacker/programmer,
instead of being respected just for being "kind".
If you really are an expert in economics, you
should have thought this through.
Given your arguments, giving a concert in aid
of a good cause is slave labour.
This also means that U2, probably some of the richest guys in Ireland, is in fact slaves.
Slavery is only at term appropriate if you are
_forced_ to do work for nothing.
Opensource-developers aren't forced into anything.
They just do what they feel like doing, hacking..
and why not make a contribution that millions
of other people will respect you for?
If you don't want to code GPL-stuff, then don't.
It is as simple as that.
We all know that the average slashdotter doesn't think highly of copyright law, but all this mirroring and redistribution of copyrighted material is nevertheless a violation of that body of law.
I can see two results: either the USB people are going to realize that it's silly to try to hoard this sort of information, or they're going to send out a hardy "fuck you" to the community and redouble their efforts to charge for the info. Let's just hope they'll choose the former.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
USB Promoters:-
- Compaq
- Hewlett Packard
- Intel
- Lucent Technologies
- Microsoft
- NEC
- Philips
+ > 600 members found on Contact Filter/SearchThe only Good System is a Sound System
Have you ever heard of Taylor Wines?
Well, have you?
Ok, seems that the Taylor Family had a winery that produced some popular wines, and some big corporate Behemoth decided, "Oh, look a vast expanse of gold as far as the eye can see! Let's aquire them!"
Well, there was one stubborn Taylor who refused to sell out.
But the Behemoth got him, see, they didn't really care about the land or the wine so much as the name Taylor, which had mindshare and synergy and all that good stuff. So, he could continue to make wine... but he is legally not allowed to put his own name on it. This is the way corporations operate with their wonderful intellectual property laws, like patents, trademarks and copyrights.
So, I hope this little fable may enlighten you as to why cororate behemoths love "intellectual property," but us individuals should hate it.
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
P.S. Another message on the list hints how you can hijack an account and get at the docs.
Anyone willing to do this and post a login? Or make a mirror?
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Are the documents themselves restricted if other people have them? If so, could they not be "translated" to say effectively the same thing, but in such a way that the documents are then authored by someone else, and so open for distribution?
Darn it! Just when I had gotten my panties all into a bunch over this, you tell me it was all about nothing!! I had this really great flame of you, your mother, and your home town all typed up and ready to go. But Noooooo, you have to go and inject useful discussion onto my personal flame-board, Slashdot.
Oh well... I have to find something else to do, like look through the list of patents granted today or use the search engines to find out if anybody said something negative about Linux today.
--
Be insightful. If you can't be insightful, be informative.
If you can't be informative, use my name
Be insightful. If you can't be insightful, be informative.
If you can't be informative, use my name
I'm not a coked-out Linux zealot, but I do realize that there are a *LOT* of standards organizations like this that only make their standards and work available to their members. Well, why doesn't someone start either a Linux coalition of just an Open Source one. People join by signing up on a website and when a set of standards like these require membership, everyone sends in the couple bucks or so and they all get a copy of the standards. As long as they're all official members of the coalition, the coalition can be a member. Hell, you could even elect a representative to go to the various conferences and deal on the behalf of the coalition. You could probably even raise a decent salary for the person if you got at least 10,000 people who wouldn't mind paying like a $1/mo dues fee...
Esperandi
The specification for AGP costs $2500 also - now it is the defacto standard for video cards. So there are other factors that can come into play for any given technology to achieve widespread acceptance. With AGP, I believe it to be critical mass usage and performance that drives its popularity, not the fact that is closed or open source.
And I'm glad to report it was successful - the docs are back where they belong, at
:/
http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass. html.
Unfortunately, slashdot rejected the news item on it - seems bashing someone is better than reporting they fixed it.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
If your technology has already been put in just about every single new computer and is gaining support why not charge money? In the case of USB it's popular enough that charging for development documentation won't harm USB at all.
What they want is not the result of anyone's productive work, but specifications, which are something needed for productive work.
So in a nutshell, open source is exactly like closed source (from the developers point of view), except that the developer works for nothing.
He works because he likes doing it. Besides he gets to use the result of his work as well as that of other open source developers. BTW, some open source developers are actually being paid by companies who have realized that one can make money with open source.
In my book, working for nothing is exactly the same as slavery. For this reason alone open source must be stopped, by Federal Law if need be.
OK, I think you've just stooped into the cesspits of trolldom. Someone moderate this moron down.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
I think he was referring to DV devices, which are most certainly NOT dead. All the DV, MiniDV cameras and decks I've worked with support firewire/1394, and it's real fun to plug a camera into a firewire bus and have the video feed show up in Final Cut Pro. For DV, it's the preferred method.
It may be faster, but the current implimentations of Firewire and USB allow 63 and 127 devices, respectively. Not that I'd ever have anywhere near 63 Firewire devices to hook up, though.
For the same Reasons that the Moton Picture Association is trying to prevent Drivers for DVD's from being created for Linux.
:-)
Its unfortunate that these companys aren't taking linux seriously and creating drivers for the "ALTERNATIVE" OS's, and making it difficult for us to create our own.
Someday They might wake up and stop limiting the potential for drivers on the alternative OS's (and suing us as in the DeCSS case)
Just my 2 cents as I move from Lurker to Poster
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."
From a quick look at www.usb.org, there seems to be a lot of documentation still available, including most older documentation.
The only document that seems to be restricted are those from the 1999 USB 2.0 conference. This may be a bad thing, but right now it looks like its just an attempt to prevent incompatible standards.
Either that or something I missed entirely is blocked.
If this is moderated as a troll then how come replies that are rabidly pro-Linux get moderated up?
Good question. Erm... can you point to an article that was moerated up for being rabidly pro-linux?. Although this was probably moderated as Troll because it seems to have been written entirely to annoy, and contained comments such as "open source must be stopped, by Federal Law if need be." which isn't exactly the most balanced way of presenting an argument.
Couldn't be that you Open source socialists just can't take free critisism when it's offered ?
I find it amusing that you seem to consider socialist to be an insult. Anyway, some of us will take criticism. Some will not. Some of us will allow abuse and insults (Which you supplied an abundance of). Some will not.
It is the American way to drive to succeed, to excel, to MAKE MONEY.
Ahh, so this is where I'm going wrong. I'm not American. Damn. If only I was I could live up to your stereotype.
Those who work for free are already losers when measured by the yardstick of Dollars.
I'm not working by the yardstick of Dollars (or even pounds). There are other ways to measure success. For some reason, my University didn't really consider how much money I might make when giving me my degree.
So please, continue to work for free so the sane amongst us profit from you!
Thanks for your permission.
Do you actually understand what money's for? Its simply an extension of the barter system that allows for more complicated deals than a simple swap. Those who produce open source software don't need it. They want other open source software. You on the other hand seem to have an obsession with money. You really ought to develop your own opinion rather than conforming to what you think America is all about.
In defence, people mentioned Linux and nothing else because they don't use anything else. For the most part they've been windows users that finally started using a real OS. They've never touched anything like Unix other than Linux. Simply they are naive. They don't mean any harm to BSD (I hope) or other OSS OSs, they simply aren't worried about them.
I'm glad you made the point that a lot of Linux development is NOT non-profit, which is why I'm not so worried about Linux USB support -- (say) RedHat will be the first to get it, and they'll make money from it, then the rest will have it, and all is well.
This is just speculation, I don't know that the masses think this way, but they sure seem to. If it isn't the case, and they HAVE been dependant at one point or another on something else, they have no excuse.
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script-fu: hash bang slash bin bash
[ approaching AI ]
Read here. Randy is the "maintainer" for linux-usb. I believe that this slashdot article was rushed out too early.
http://www.usb.org/app/db/search/contacts/ Look at the source to get a bunch of Vendor IDs. Then append "-admin" and use that as a username and password.
um... I think you're the one getting confused. See http://www.usb.org/developers/docs.html where it says:
USB Device Class Specifications
(USB-IF member username and password required)
If you click on the link you are indeed prompted for a member username and password.
-Andy
Just 7 months after the whole /. community was screaming over "Apple licensing" of Firewire, I find this most ironic.
:-)
USB 2.0, be it an eventual product or vaporware announcement, was designed to steal mindshare from Firewire.
USB was designed for cheap low-bandwidth plug in parts. That's what it is good at. Trying to scale up from that detracts from the original design. It makes absolutely no sense to have a mouse on the same bus as an external hard drive or video capture.
Now that Firewire has been FUDDED into a mostly-Apple expansion port, Intel moves in for the harvest. Nice. You didn't see it coming?
FOr those of you that don't know, "Firewire" is the same as "Sony i.Link" and 1394 ports. Sony just calls it that to prevent mindshare from Firewire.
Bah. No more coffee this morning.
> It should be noted that many other operating systems also currently support USB as well. BSD's not with standing.
... but FreeBSD has had USB support for some time now.
I'll suppress the flames, it didn't look like a troll
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
REDMOND, Wash. -- March 1,2000 -- Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") announces the release of DirectExperience(tm), a revolutionary new system designed to provide an unparalleled audiual, visual and for the first time, tactile experience while providing optimal protection for the audio-visual-tactile content.
By inserting a series of IntelliPlugs(tm) into the flesh of the arms, legs and spine along with a DirectExperience(tm) cranial socket, content providers can download audio, visual, and tactile sensory experiences into the cortex of the brain, providing life-like experiences unrivalled by any other streaming medium released to date.
In addition to providing an encrypted stream of information right up to the integrated dermal and cranial sockets, reducing the chances of a successful side-channel attack, Microsoft has worked closely and secured an unparalleled deal in which all infants born after March 31, 2000 will have the plugs introduced in-vitro and connected to a DirectExperience terminal shortly after birth. Microsoft plans to use the profits from the licensing of its technology to content providers to allow for intravenous nourishment for these infants through the course of their natural lives. It is estimated that within 50 to 70 years, every person in the world will be upgraded to handle DirectExperience technology; after that, production of new consumers will be off-loaded to a separate farming location.
Early product testers, when asked about the DirectExperience(tm) system, offered the following comments:
"*belch*"
"Glurgh..."
"There is no spoon..."
Microsoft President and CEO Steve Ballmer, when asked about the DirectExperience(tm) system, said "It's the smell, you see..."
Jay (=
Since it's pretty unreasonable to expect individual OSS developers to ante up $2500 for the privilege of writing software, what about some organization such as the FSF paying the fee for the specs and signing up people to develop drivers, etc.
Is there some sort of nondisclosure that restricts anyone from doing this? Or are only commercial software vendors invited to the USB party?
This smells a little like the fracus that resulted when Intel closed some specs a while back. Didn't they eventually relent?
Finally, the wiseguy who thought the editor should research before posting should have checked the links on the URL he posted. The link to go to the class specs was indeed password protected.
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CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
btw if you want to make a mirror of the members area off usb.org w/wget do something like:
wget -m --http-user=1211 --http-passwd=cypherpunk -np http://www.USB.org/members/devclass.html
the -np will make it so you do not get parent directories.
- ixx -
didn't mean to post anonymous on that last mirror post.
Just my conspiracy theorist notion.
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
I suspect you might've gone and confused 'open' and 'free' and 'free' yourself, too?
;) The fact that "there are a lot of people who'll never need to know the contents" doesn't permit a financial elitism. That is a business/commercial mentality which has no place in the Open(-Source) arena.
Let's use "Free" for "idealogically Open", and "free" for money for the time being.
Then I'd say that a specification should be Open - must be! - or Free, and it should be cheaply available.
Now, if it's Open then there are no restrictions on redistribution: therefore you can sell it to my friend for $2500 and he'll give me a copy because he's nice like that. All without license breach. And more to the point, I'll take a look at it, change it in a few places, and send it back both to my friend and the original authors as diffs.
(Incidentally, I think your use of "GPL" there is unfortunate. LGPL, possibly, or something else. GPL is a bit inapplicable when it comes to specs, because if it's going to be a Spec, then it needs to be relatively fixed.)
Now, this $2500 thing: is the figure reasonable? Is the documentation for USB still Open? Is it restricting distribution or biassing itself against a particular set of users? (E.g. the GPL states there should be no division of users on such things as country/ethnic/religious grounds - can I extend that to "financially able"??)
*I*'m not "a professional developer", though. I don't see why I should have to work for A Big Linux Named-Company in order for them to afford a copy of the Spec for me. In fact, that scenario is no better than the current commercial scene. Bad.
And while I'm here
~Tim
--
Rushing on down to the circle of the turn
FOr those of you that don't know, "Firewire" is the same as "Sony i.Link" and 1394 ports. Sony just calls it that to prevent mindshare from Firewire.
Firewire is not "Sony i.Link." Firewire also provides a line of power to the devices connected, whereas products plugged into Sony's i.Link do not. A subtle difference, but one that could make a difference when buying a firewire drive WITHOUT an AC Adapter.
-Nick
Perhaps the Slashdot article doesn't make it clear - it's not the Linux-USB people who are restricting access, it's USB-IF who are the culprits in the matter.
My question is, why would someone want to restrict the development of drivers for their products? Surely this is simple maths - no support, less people buy. Take the SBLive for example - this has excellent support under linux, and many Linux weenies went out and bought it [GRiN] ...
.my 2p
While source code is GPL'd, documentation isn't. Anyone could look at the source and document the class specs and charge for it. But in the spirit of open development and abstraction(I wouldn't want to spend time interpreting what a function does if someone else could tell me), perhaps future docs need their own public license. The pace of development would quicken and the barriers to entry (spending the time to figure out wtf something does so you can write code based on it) would lower.
But isn't the purpose of the Doomsday machine lost if you keep it a secret!
Linux can't just drop USB. If I go to the PC World next to my office I can buy USB keyboards, mices, scanners, printers, mp3 players, digital cameras etc. Most (if not all) new PC's and motherboards come with built-in USB. Linux needs to support USB. Therefore the developers need the specs. Whilst the specs should be freely available, $2,500 is peanuts to companies like IBM, SGI, Corel, VA, Red Hat etc.
HH
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings.
Makes me wonder if the Beanie can be revoked.
As far as I understand, it was the Linux developers, not the Forum, that got the beanie. They'll need (and deserve) it more than ever.
-
__
Comment submitted. There will be a delay before you understand what you posted.
Start recruiting hardware manufacturers, take the last open version of the spec, Fork, and start working from there. Come up with a sticker for device and motherboard manufacturers (OpenUSB?) and refuse to buy any hardware that doesn't have the sticker.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"Methinks the editor should have done some research himself and put some of these in the story."
If you had read all the messages you would have seen that HeUnique was not only reading those links, he posted to the thread asking for more information and their (usb developers) opinion on posting this story to slashdot.
Interestingly, Alan Cox suggested waiting for a week before posting to Slashdot to give them a chance to explain and/or change back graciously before being "hit by a nuclear warhead"
Maybe Slashdot could make some sort of community watchdog section where things that seem suspicious could be posted, but in sort of a beta state before going to the main page.
HeUnique:
What's your response to this message? http://electr icrain.com/lists/archive/linux-usb/2000/02/msg011
You know...I really should start making posts of actual substance, instead of continually tearing down Slashdot, but I think Slashdot could be an excellent medium if some issues with it were addressed - such as journalistic integrity (as if there were such a thing).
FireWire supports both synchronous stream data, like video, and block data, like disk drives. Most of the action is in synchronous stream data, primarily video. Block devices for FireWire are rare, but they do exist. I just saw a Zip drive, of all things, for FireWire. The big problem isn't Apple, it's Intel and Microsoft. Intel has backed away from block-device FireWire support and is now pushing USB 2 for that purpose. Microsoft was late with FireWire support in the OS.
There are a huge number of FireWire devices.
Here's a short list (not for 28K modems).
Some related articles/sites:
The GNU/Linux IEEE 1394 Development Project
FireWire: The Fast, Easy to Use, Multimedia Interconnect Standard
IEEE 1394, the A/V Digital Interface of Choice
FireWire -- For Footage That Flies
Papers on IEEE 1394 Technology
Texas Instruments Interface Products
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He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
In the links thread where people broke in, a "coward" broke in, got the specs, and noticed exactly why they want this rev hidden. It has nothing to do with the money that the USB folks just got, and everything to do with trying to do security the stupid way.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
FOr those of you that don't know, "Firewire" is the same as "Sony i.Link" and 1394 ports. Sony just calls it that
to prevent mindshare from Firewire.
No, sony calls it that because APPLE won't let people use the word "firewire" without paying a fee. That's why it goes by so many names.
Apple killed firewire -- nobody needed to help.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
One thing should be noted also, since the posting is somewhat unclear on this topic.
The suggestion is not that the group who received the award has now closed off some specs. See #15 for example.
The suggestion is now that this USB group got $10k to use, the specs suddenly cosy money. (See post from Alan Cox).
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It should be noted that many other operating systems also currently support USB as well. BSD's not with standing. I think it should be opened for EVERYONE not just Linux.
What makes Linux more special than the rest? And why should Microsoft have to pay instead of Linux? Oh, being not-for-profit is entirely false. Ask Redhat how much their stock is worth.
Not to mention once Linux, or a BSD used the standards in opensource, other places would just take the API calls from there.
Whats the object of this message? Stop fighting a Linux vs. the world battle, and fight an opensource vs. the closed source world battle. You might find you have better luck as the number of opensource people is greater than linux people. Especially as far as large corporations are concerned.
Rod Taylor
Before they fix their security leaks, I've mirrored the members only pages at
http://www.geocities.com/usb_dev/.
Feel free to mirror this...
Additionally, another AC has posted a mirror where the docs can be viewed (scroll down if you're interested). [I have personally been fucking with mixmaster trying to send off some mails, damnit] Of particular interest are two particular documents: "Device Class Definition for Content Security Devices 0.9a" and "Content Security Method 4 - Elliptic Curve Content".
The first of these docs outlines roughly why: "Protected Content typically refers to copyrighted content. Content Protection Methods (CPM) have been developed for the controlled distribution of protect [sic] content." and also uses an example of a pair of USB speakers which allow protection of content up until the hardware induces analog playback.
The second document discusses the technical details of Elliptic Curve cryptographic methods to provide authentication, and authentication + encryption. This is no CSS. This is good old fashioned high grade badass crypto. Some of the inline commentary regarding illegal intent there is somewhat chilling.
Anyone still have doubts as to why this dinner is being held behind closed doors and costs $2500 a plate?
I am deisgning a USB device in VHDL and I downloaded some of the Device Class specifications previously - it sucks that the otherwise very open (there are no licensing fees to create USB devices, and you can download the protocol specification from the website for free; they also run a very active and useful Developers Webboard for free) USB site should clam up on the critically important Device Class specs like this.
The Device Class specifications outline standard ways to use the USB protocol for, say, Modem devices, or Mass Storage Devices. If you make your hardware compliant with these Device Class specification ''APIs'' then you don't actually need to write a device driver! The major OSs write inbuilt support for the defined Device Classes, and your new Modem or whatever is recognized as being compliant with the ''APIs'' and ''just works''.
It is a bit numb to publish the physical and transport layer specifications for free but not the higher level ones! I wonder what made them decide to change?
Anyone concerned should email admin@usb.org (this is the correct address from the website) and request that the Linux implementation efforts are allowed a complimentary membership as they are not-for-profit.
-Andy
Frankly a year charge of $2500 can only affect individuals or volunteer groups. Companies and major software development groups may feel this as a bless as it shrinks USB potential market to their products.
Sincerly I am not absolutely against charging such things. Anyway things must be supported, one should pay for common expenses and many people would like to have conferences or meetings to settle up questions. and this demands money.
However USB group makes out of this an elite club. There are no chances. Either pay $2500 or hit the streets. And this does not just end here. If anyone has taken a look at their application form, then they consider ONLY companies as possible members. Besides:
"Renewal and Size of Forum. The Forum Sponsors reserve the right to limit the number of participants or to discontinue the program upon written notice. Upon any such, Company shall receive a refund of a portion of its subscription fee proportional to the amount of time otherwise remaining in its enrollment period."
The Forum sponsors are: Compaq, Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM PC Co., Intel, Microsoft, NEC, and Northern Telecom. So one may well think were this beautiful family of sponsors are pushing us to. Specially if we consider that this membership allows "early access to specifications".
In any case I would highly recomend anyone to read this membership form. It presents some more interesting points that may develope discussion:
http://www.usb.org/developers/data/usbifapp.pdf
It seems to me that the rampant mirroring some people are suggesting isn't going to be particularly effective, in the long term at least.
These specifications are 'in various stages of development' and the folks working on this stuff would probably like to keep up with these developments, not be stuck with what was freely available yesterday.
This needs to be sorted out sensibly and diplomatically, hijacking accounts and mirroring (potentially superceded) documentation is going to win us no friends nor be of much long term use. What it will do is make us look like a bunch of petulant children.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I've read all the comments on this article, and visited a few links. There's quite a few rumors and half-truths going around, so I won't try to address most of them. I will, however, address the simple act of trying to close off the device classes.
If we look back on the path computing has taken over the past two decades, we see it littered with dead technology. What does most of this dead technology have in common? At one point or another, it was closed off. Ridiculous fees were charged for redistribution of specifications. Those who paid were prohibited from sharing their information with anyone but the others who paid, and sometimes not even them.
By contrast, if the steward of a particular technology practices open computing, whether the technology lives or dies depends on technological rather than political (and no, I don't mean governmental) merits. If these stewards need money; it would stand to reason that whomever stood to benefit from the technology's wide adoption should contribute more to it in the hopes that their investments would be returned.
USB's move here could undermine its previously open stance, and that would be a bad thing for USB. I hope they reevaluate it. USB is a very useful technology in its own right and need not be squelched in this manner.
Oh, and I can't pass up contributing to a USB thread without telling you that salespeople in a local electronics store recently told one of my friends that the USB port on some home entertainment equipment was for the brand-spankin'-new ``Universal Stereo Bus''. :-)
- http://www.usb.org/developers/docs.html
- http://electr icrain.com/lists/archive/linux-usb/2000/02/msg010
3 5.html - http://electr icrain.com/lists/archive/linux-usb/2000/02/msg010
5 5.html
Methinks the editor should have done some research himself and put some of these in the story. A slashdot story with no links? Bah!--
Although it appears people are confusing the group that got the award (developers), and the people who are charging for access to docs (USB-IF), perhaps it's time to split the Beanie Awards concept in twain.
- Slashdot Beanie Awards
- Slashdot Weenie Awards
(Slashdot Weenie Awards =anagram> So, what ideals answered?)For laudable service to fellow geeks.
For all the FUD-spewing, patent abusing sorts.
[
I've contacted the individual authors of the documents being restricted, and most of them appear to agree with my points. I think we can expect this situation to get fixed with either usb.org putting it back into a publically accessible spot or the same documents being published elsewhere.
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
That was the net/net of this situation so if you are concerned with getting at the information there is nothing further to worry about. If you are interested in the background, I will try to explain.
The USB-IF charter has always been to support the development of USB products. It has also always included the FOCUS on members and anything that was made available to the general public was fine as long as it didn't become a support or financial burden. This is based on the belief that USB technology is close enough to "rocket science" that most all individual companies will have trouble if they don't have support from the spec architects in the form of education, information centralization, market message commonality, a compliance program.... These things just ain't free. Ergo the membership organization does most of these things for its members and charges an annual membership fee to cover the cost.
USB-IF is a non profit corporation that spends over 20% of its budget on web information distribution, over %30 percent of its budget on a compliance program, slightly under %20 of its budget on administration. Whats left is now destined for on of the most often requested services from it's members, an improved compliance and logo program. The members feedback has been for a long time (this is an expensive change and it took a lot of effort to make it) that we should have a better way to stop the slipshod manufacturing and design of things that call themselves USB products. I don't know how this will work out, but we are doing our best to accomplish what the members are asking within our budget.
Now the place where this community can help!! As part of our compliance testing we verify product electrical characteristics and protocol capabilities. When it comes to the qualification of drivers and therefore the statement that a product works with a certain OS we only have one set of tests that we can use. They were developed and given to the IF for this use by the promotor companies (yes Microsoft is a promotor company). There were some big costs to develop these tests, by the way, that were covered by the promotor companies themselves. Currently for any other OS we have to simply take the peripheral vendors word for their drivers compliance to the OS. If the Linux community can find a way to judge driver quality for USB products the OS column for Linux on the USB-IF product list would mean much more. We are open to a proposal that would help seperate the functional products from the non functional.
PLEASE NOTE;Our compliance program is primarily a feedback tool to developers. We get more repeat attendees at workshops that come back even after their products have "passed" because the workshops allow them to learn so much and develop so much easier or quicker. As most of us heard in high school or college, "the score is not the goal of the test, it is the feedback on the learning that is of real value".
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