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The End of the Free PCI Device List (Update)

Posted by chrisd on from the please-don't-buy-our-hardware dept.

imann writes "For many years, Jim Boemler was the maintainer of a free PCI device table which reference all the PCI ID's of PCI Devices. This service is used by Free Operating Systems for keeping up to date their pci device list. That was a very usefull service for us (i was working in a Linux distro in the hardware suport team). It was wonderfull until the PCI-SIG had their lawyers cease and desisted him to stop this service because of the use of the PCI logo AND name ! You don't have the right to use the three letters P,C,I ! Incredible... So he was forced to close his website. This is a incredible loss for the hardware support in the Free Software world. I hope PCI-SIG will change its position ! Please support Jim." A friend emailed me to point out that many /.ers have been emailing the wrong person to complain....read on for details... Jamal wrote, "The story you posted is causing us a headache. Our CTO, Alan Deikman is being bombarded by emails from people reading that story. Alan is not the person in charge of the PCI SIG, his only sin is that Znyx did host the PCI sig in the early 90s and he was the list maintainer. This was a gracious act and should not be rewarded the way it is now. Infact he is trying to help the gent with that website to see if things get resolved." Alan's email was posted on the page we linked to, erroneously.

11 of 635 comments (clear)

  1. Huh? by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Interesting
    What exactly do they have to gain from this? What do they lose by having more systems support their architecture? This makes zero sense.

    And why do my posts start at 1 all of a sudden. The worlds gone mad, and I never noticed.....

  2. We need to tell PCI-SIG by Halo- · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A lot of users (like me) buy hardware often. If a device doesn't have official support for Linux, I am less likely to buy it... If the kernel doesn't even recognize it... well, they aren't gonna be selling me one.

    I can't see how this group is going to come out ahead by doing this. The small amount of money the y (might) take in selling the information is going to be dramatically offset by the much larger amount of money their sponsors/patrons lose in sales.

  3. Easy solution by EllisDees · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just change every instance of 'PCI' on the webpage and documentation to 'Peripheral Component Interconnect' with the first letter of each word much larger than the others.

    --
    -- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
  4. Foot, shoe, gun by salesgeek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It never ceases to amaze me how easily technology organizations shoot themselves in the foot. Let's punish the developer community making our standards-based hardware more valuable!

    That also begs a question - does trademark allow you to prevent use of a word totally or just for marketing purposes. I seem to remember from school that suing someone claiming their product was "a PCI card" that wasn't licensed to do so is one thing, but saying "this card works in PCI bus systems" is quite another... and not actionalble.

    --
    -- $G
  5. There's something a little distasteful here. by bheerssen · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The trademark was granted only three months ago. It states on it that first use was Dec '94.

    Does it really take eight years to file a trademark, or does this seem more like something they did specifically so they could sue other people? Maybe this guy is just the poor test case. Try it on him and if it works, go for a bigger fish...

    --
    (Score: -1, Stupid)
  6. Doesn't quite sound right by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In the true slashdot tradition, I did not read the article, however:

    * PCI is kind of like "kleenex"; It's a common-place word that is used to describe something, usually not a company or organization. If I recall correctly, there was a legal ruling about pretty much this same situation, the plantif being Kleenex. The court did not rule in Kleenex's favor.

    * If we really want to get nitty-gritty about it, couldn't he just replace every instance of "PCI" in his site with "Peripheral Component Interconnect bus", thus (all be it wordy) technically describing the DEVICE, and not using the "trademarked PCI name"?

    * How does this fall under the "please don't buy our hardware dept."??? It doesn't seem that PCI-SIG even SELLS hardware.

  7. PCI-SIG Board of Directors by Snarph · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you look at the PCI-SIG home page you'll see a little animation mentioning that "Board members are members of the following companies...".

    Guess who shows up at the top of the list when you follow the link?

    Chair
    Tony Pierce
    Microsoft Corporation

    Well. That explains a lot.

  8. What did Shakespeare say about lawyers? by The+Tyro · · Score: 5, Interesting


    This article needs to be on a few more websites,

    I'd say change the name and thumb your nose at them... this is too valuable a service to lose to some copyright holder and their nitpicking attorneys.

    --
    Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
  9. Re:I mean, c'mon now, really by The_K4 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Unfortunanlty, when dealing with something like this there has to be a paper trail. SO if they just call him up, and somehow it turns into a big issue they could find themselves in a position where they shot them selves in the foot. Is it right that they lawyers need to get involved and draft a legal letter, no. However it's what they NEED to do for legal reasons. The way I understand this, he was offering a great service, they had a small problem with some of the format he presented the info, they come to him in a legal way to try and get this resolved (nicely) and he desides to shut down his service. Why is he shutting down? Sounds to me like he's shutting down out of spite. Now that's a good response, punish everyone else because your ego got bruised becasue someone else did something the proper way. I know, SOMEONE is gunna feel the need to modify this a flamebait, and if that's how it goes fine. The point i'm trying to make (which is not flame bait) is that there doesn't appeard to be any LOGICAL reason for this service to go away, it just needs a few changes which would probbly take almost no real time to make.

  10. Re:I mean, c'mon now, really (Hijack request) by Black+Copter+Control · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The amicability of the letter is the saccharine smile of a psychopath asking for your car key so he can park it for you.
    " Your website indicates that you are an employee of IBM, a PCI-SIG member. We therefore request that you work through IBM to investigate the possibility of creating a similar database of BCI(r) Vendor ID numbe rs which whould be available on the official PCI-SIG.
    What they are asking him to do is to hand over his database to them for free, and allow them to (possibly) make it proprietary. That's probably the real purpose of the letter. I'm pretty sure that they know that use of the three letters 'pci' would never make it past a judge, and that the use of the PCI logo is also queationable.

    I'd suggest (IANAL) that he simply remove any copies of the PCI logo and put up a disclaimer that he has absolutely no affiliation with the PCI-SIG group other than the fact that they tried to shut down his website and hi-jack the database from him.

    --
    OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
  11. Re:PCI Lists -- Current Status by drayzel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I notice that Tony Pierce of MS is on the Board at PCI-SIG. You may wnat to point out that their Knowledge base article q298837 points customers to www.yourvote.com/pci in order to ID unknown devices. I wrote the article and KNOW for a fact it is used daily be MS support techs while assisting customers.

    ~Z