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OpenBSD Clashes with Adaptec In Quest for Docs
TrumpetPower! writes "OpenBSD developers have been asking for documentation from Adaptec for over four months. Adaptec's response has been to deliberately misunderstand what is being asked of them. A former Adaptec employee admits that the hardware is buggy and tricky to get right. So, as a result, OpenBSD 3.7 will ship without Adaptec RAID support. Personally, I'm glad that Theo isn't resting on his laurels."
It would be nice if more of the Linux big names would jump on the bangwagon and lobby with companies to get open source drivers for hardware.
There's an old saying, which I think fits well here.
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." - Napolean
Absolutely. Open source drivers would be a beautiful gift, in this case it's actually more than what is being asked for. Adaptec is asked to release specs on their raid controllers, they chose not to.
They are under an obligation to provide usefulness on legit architectures, but they aren't doing that. Adaptec should get over their shame of bugs, and allow the driver people at OpenBSD a chance at making things work.
There is no general fix for this problem, often specs are released way too late. On the other hand, releasing open source drivers will open specs for the same device. These specs aren't just trade secrets, they're actually necessary for building drivers.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
There's a very simple solution for this: Don't buy anything from Adaptec, ever. They'll be out of business; problem solved.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
That's not the point - if it was easy to get specs for hardware, then /all/ operating systems would benefit - not just the well-used ones.
well you can guess that this particular controller will be avoided by anyone with connections. Openbsd doesn't enjoy much use from desktop or developer users because it's too hard, and has few advantages.
The one advantage it does have is security, which is vital for running large scale servers. These servers have reliabilty as a high priority, so RAID is the norm.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Which make you think: "Why is OpenBSD doing this and not FreeBSD". I think it's sad that the FreeBSD developers don't seem to care that much about having free drivers (the AAC is free I believe, but the management interface is not).
Of cause what really annoys me is that the Linux developers seem to care even less. Why is it that the developers of free software can't stand togther and demand documentation? And why is it that it's the smallest team that must make these demands?
It allows so many companies to sell you a leash and handcuffs. Yes go ahead and wear them, the great advantage is that you'll never go where you shouldn't and that you'll never hurt anyone.
The amazing thing about this whole afair is that Adaptec itself is also a leashed and cuffed company. But after some thinking I realized Nvidia is just such a company. Even if they wanted to release the _specifications_ of their hardware they couldn't.
All in all this forces people to stick to one OS. That's why it is so important people step up for free specifications of their hardware. Because without them you are bound to be tied to a monopolist.
Theo didn't get that FSF award for nothing.
It's all about making sure the big shareholders know that the company's policies are costing them sales.
People say that Theo should stop being so annoying, but the only way shareholders find out is when it gets massively publicised like this.
It worked for the 802.11 drivers. It's worth a shot here.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Just use IBM serveRAID controllers...
Ironically AAC's support under FreeBSD at least has been superior to Linux's for quite a while (not so much in the past few months, but certainly for the past couple of years before). We originally bought our cards to run under FreeBSD, and had significant problems migrating to Linux where the aacraid driver liked to fall over every few weeks.
I'd rather use software RAID now. Closed source management tools and unreliable software, hardware and firmware are not things I want anywhere fucking near my data storage subsystems.
Have an old Ultra 1 doing firewall and light server duty for a DSL line. So far its had zero hardware issues and everything has worked. Wish I could have said the same for NetBSD. It locked up randomly on the same box.
I haven't used OpenBSD in a few years and was really impressed with their rewrite of packet filter. You linux folks should check it out.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
But he's belligerent in the right direction. He does more than Stalmman does on the Open Source front, he calls a spade a spade, and is one hell of a coder.
This guy is way out there
Why adaptec isnt releasing detailed specs is obvious. If people had them they could better evaluate the product. Apparently the marketing dept. at adaptec fears transparency and complacency.
Look at the small and medium end raid market now. Theres not many players, Adaptec,promise,3ware and a bunch that adaptec bought up. Adaptec gains nothing by opening up itself to a point by point comparison with lesser competitors. Their name recognition is carrying them much the way IBM's used to. Further if the hardware is bugged and tricky and adaptec knew about it then they open themselves up to liability.
Their reasons are obvious keep the barriers high and keept those that can't climb them out.
You're not wrong. Is it just me, or does this de Raadt character get 'snippy' each and every time the world doesn't roll over and play the game how he wants them to?
An important point in a geek's career is the time when s/he recognises that if s/he's gonna get any further in said career, they're gonna have to maintain a business-benefiting attitude and act in business-benefiting ways else businesses won't employ you any more. Sheer guru-like skill only carries you so far, and then you've gotta play nice with others or others won't play with you anymore.
Some geeks come to that realisation early in their careers. I try to tell my geek.students that before they graduate. Some geeks never ever wake up, and they grow old on low incomes angry at the world.
de Raadt does some wonderful things, sure, but there's always this persistent undertone of a bad attitude waiting to sneak out and throw his weight around. Public nastygrams and "screw you, we'll ship with even less support for your product than we did before" dummy spits constitute "does not play nice with others" in my book.
Trouble is, geeks carry no weight in business, and the businessfolks have all the money. It's up to us to decide if we want some of that money or not.
I find your ideas intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I wish the Linux people would have enough balls to make a stand with us. No such luck there.
Oh well
The OpenBSD people won't include something closed in their system, but if you want to close up a copy of OpenBSD and sell it yourself it is fine. You can still use binary drivers and you will be responsible for those drivers, so when someone asks why your Adaptec AAC RAID is broken and doesn't allow for any of the advertised functionality, you will have to explain that you didn't make the driver and that you don't even have the ability to fix it.
OpenBSD doesn't want to lie to people, saying they have support for something when they don't.
This wasn't even about "closing" source to begin with, it has nothing to do with source. It is about the documentation to write a driver for OpenBSD themselves; one they can be responsible for and fix it if there are issues.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
An important point in a geek's career is the time when s/he recognises that if s/he's gonna get any further in said career, they're gonna have to maintain a business-benefiting attitude and act in business-benefiting ways else businesses won't employ you any more.
Theo works full-time on the OpenBSD project. He needs to pay the rent / mortgage sure, but he isn't in this for the money.
While he may be 'grating' at times he does stick to his principles (much like RMS).
It's like the guy didn't even read Theo's email, just chopped it up and repeated portions of previous emails in response.
I really don't get this... it's win/win for adaptec unless they have something huge to hide. OpenBSD has been around for a while and has a good reputation for getting stuff done. If they would just forward Theo and his buddies to some guy on the back end of things, they'd generate some sales and also make the OpenBSD people shut up for a while.
Wierdest thing is you KNOW the guy they're emailing speaks excellent English because of the typos he makes. He really must be deliberately misunderstanding the request.
Trouble is, geeks carry no weight in business, and the businessfolks have all the money. It's up to us to decide if we want some of that money or not.
Jeez, he just wants documentation. Why is this such a problem for people to understand? It's not about how much money he could be making if he had a better set of kneepads, or if he let Adaptec shine him on because that's the way "the game" is played. It's about being able to do what he wants with the hardware he (or the other users of OpenBSD) use. It costs nothing or next-to-nothing for Adaptec to provide the same documentation that their own developers use, yet apparently Adaptec doesn't wants to keep this secret because it might be embarrassing.
Perhaps you think it's a good idea to keep this information secret because the embarrassing aspects of the docs might get in the way of some of Adaptec's employees' desire to play the game and exercise their ability to go for "some of that money". Or perhaps not; maybe there's another reason not to allow serious and qualified developers access to existing documentation. Theo just wants to write software that people will use and will use as a reason to purchase more Adaptec products. I'm shocked that you would actually teach students that this is a bad idea.
Then again, having a problem with the way someone conducts themselves is no reason to disregard their innocuous requests. The money is not always right.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Some idiot mailbombed his account. It's only natural that Adaptec removed the squeaky wheel, rather than oiling it.
I suspect that one of these choices is incorrect. Correct.
Therein lies the fundamental misunderstanding... releasing specs does *NOT* give a competitor an advantage. What good does it do LSI to know that Adaptec's registers are little-endian? Or that tickling bit 4 of accumulator B will trigger an array rebuild? Documents only lay out the capabilities of a product, but do nothing to explain or detail the underlying silicon.
I suspect that one of these choices is incorrect. Correct.
I think it is quite common for vendors to put out hardware that isn't quite engineered up to spec, where, if you looked at its design and interface, you'd see that it really can't work quite right, or get the performance they claim. Another reason is that the documentation may simply not exist, a clear indication of poor engineering practices at the hardware vendor. I suspect that's actually the main reason so many hardware vendors are so secretive about their interfaces: they don't want to air their dirty laundry in public.
As a rule of thumb, if you are buying a piece of hardware, buy one for which known, good, independently-developed open source drivers exist. The existence of such drivers is a good indication that the hardware is well-documented, probably decently designed, and that it probably does what it is advertised as doing. And that's a good rule of thumb even if you are buying the hardware that you only intend to use with closed-source operating systems.
"Maybe it would be better just to boycott these imbeciles."
Yes, it is. Not just because their stance on open source drivers, but because their own proprietary software sucks, too.
There are lots of good controllers out there that will even save you money compared with Adaptec; there is no need to buy Adaptec.
My experience with graphics chips also led me to the conclusion that many chip vendors that refuse to release documentation don't themselves understand how their parts work fully enough to tell the world. Intel is one notable exception.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
> William Gates Jr has built
> a very successful busines
Not to be a pedantic, but I think the Gates you're looking for is William Gates III. Wm Gates Jr is his lawyer father, who probably is as responsible for the success of MSFT as his son...
By the way, yes Theo can be a bit of a prick, but he's going after putting out simply the best version of BSD Unix around. It's why I've bought every release since the mid-2.x...
-> I dislike sigs...
You're not wrong. Is it just me, or does this de Raadt character get 'snippy' each and every time the world doesn't roll over and play the game how he wants them to?
There's quite some distance between demanding immediate obedience and 4 months of delays and excuses. Most businessmen don't stand for that either (or they go out of business).
An important point in a geek's career is the time when s/he recognises that if s/he's gonna get any further in said career, they're gonna have to maintain a business-benefiting attitude and act in business-benefiting ways else businesses won't employ you any more.
'Business benefiting attitude' does not mean sycophant or pushover. It means acting in the best interests of a company, sometimes whether they like it or not. Fact is, a lot of assholes succeed in business, mostly because they know how, to whom, and when to be assholes. A trained asshole is a powerful weapon.
Trouble is, geeks carry no weight in business, and the businessfolks have all the money. It's up to us to decide if we want some of that money or not.
Bullshit. How many CEOs of the Fortune 500 are MBAs and how many are technical people that learned business? You're confusing 'engineer' with 'asocial dweeb who lives in his parents' basement'.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I've been reading the posts on the misc mail list for OpenBSD, and I think a few things need to be said.
First, Theo and the other developers, although making good points, are being quite rude to employees. I think that its important for them to push this issue, but I think they are handling it immaturaly. Flaming Adaptec (ex-)employees is not a good move, even if Scott did make a post on OSNews -- attack the companies economic base through a boycott instead.
Secondly, I think that if Theo and the gang started an organized boycott of Adaptec raid controllers in a professional manner, then got those people to sign a petition, write to Adaptec, and such along with getting a pretty accurate count of how many of Adaptec's raid controllers have been purchased by those boycotting Adaptec, they might be able to show themselves to be consisting of a large enough market to cause a dent in Adaptec's profits. Not only OpenBSD, but also FreeBSD, NetBSD, and Linux users who feel that its important to use open source drivers. This may require a bit of work, but its the most effective way to get Adaptec's attention. I mean, how many open-source Unix servers are using their raid cards? How many of those users, admins, etc. realize the importance of an open source driver so it can be maintained by the community, since most companies have been slow (to say the least) to update their binary drivers? Not to mention, the flexibility involved with porting it to different Open-source Unix OS's and using it with different software configurations and versions?
Thirdly, some people are arguing that that Adaptec will release an SDK in 4 months, but given the history of the Adaptec drivers and drivers by other companies, that would probably involve using a binary driver... which wouldn't help.
I think that if the open source OS's are going be taken seriously by vendors, then they need to act in a professional manner and show their economic strength through well-crafted reports and well-organized efforts.
I support the work of Theo and the other OpenBSD developers -- I believe they are right, but I think the open source community has to join together for a common cause and be professional about such things.
If we, as a community, can make this happen in a professional manner, and win, then maybe, just maybe, we can extend this to other vendors. If we can't pull together, then we're fighting a losing battle against closed source OS's such as Windows and venders such as Adaptec, and we might as well give up now.
We can do this, I know we can. But, we have to do it correctly. So, come on folks, act professional, realize what's at stake, and organize. Think of the visibility the grass roots democratic groups got when they organized and acted like a unified front -- they didn't win the election, but that was surely noticed.
Sure, it's annoying that we have to wait four months, but at least they've promised something. - Seems they were saying much the same four months ago.
Frankly, I think Theo is being impatient and hotheaded. - He is indeed.
Stick a carrot infront of you, just out of reach, and slap your ass. You can follow that carrot forever, but it will get no closer. Sooner or later you will have to give up on the carrot.
If you don't give up on the carrot, you're being foolish. Sit down in the sand and demand better.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
How about simplifying things for you.
Adaptec doesn't provide documentation, OpenBSD doesn't provide drivers. If Adaptec wants to sell their hardware to people who use OpenBSD, they should provide the documentation.
If they don't care about the sales, then don't provide the documentation.
I suspect that Theo will win. You see, Adaptec needs customers more than Theo needs Adaptec.
Derek
Yes, but that doesnt mean he's always wrong. Its probably best to judge him on what he's saying *at the moment*. Being argumentative is not nesseserily a bad thing, although he does put his foot in it more than is really a good idea
Thats not really true. I'm a geek and i have quite a lot of say in technical decisions. Our CTO is a geek also. I do not work for a technical company. I work for a publishing company.
If any company hires a technically minded person and then wont listen to his or her advice, they they they are wasting that person.
Would you hire an accountant and then ignore their advice about financial matters? if so, please tell me the company you are involved with so I can avoid accidentally getting hired there.
Any company that ignores the advice of its geeks is wasting a valuable resource. The companies I have worked for realise this.
That doesnt mean they are always right, however moderating conflicting advice is part of being a manager.
God forbid a developer and a major contributor to our freedoms should be upset that a corporation has held off releasing documentation after months of 'negotiation'. He may chew people out on mailing lists, but that does not make an asshole. His way of dealing with people personally might just be a little intolerant, but he has done much more for the open source community than any other single leader - and he does NOT need to sit on a huge platform of sponsorship and hype to make a difference. What did Linus do? Write a kernel with a license that corporations decided was good in fighting the Microsoft monopoly. Bam, it's done. Theo actually swam upstream with little help and brought a good project with good ideals which DO help others - OpenSSH being everyone's favorite example. Where would you be without it? Up sh!t creek.
If you don't use OpenBSD because of its project leader, you may as well never use or communicate with any OpenSSH clients or servers and you can forget about PF. Just to be a real self righteous prick you may as well not use the internet at all just in case your packets pass through a server which an 'asshole' contributed to. Or a hardware design. In fact, how do you know assholes didn't grow the trees that maintain your oxygen supply? May as well stop breathing.
Sam ty sig.