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."

Comments

Why just OpenBSD?

[Dacmot]

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

[deanj]

There's an old saying, which I think fits well here.

"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." - Napolean

Why just documentation?

[Penguinoflight]

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.

Re:Why just documentation?

[0racle]

They are under an obligation to provide usefulness on legit architectures

Exactly what obligation does Adaptec have?

Re:Why just documentation?

[Anonymous Coward]

None. Just as I have no obligation to ever buy an Adaptec piece of hardware again.

Re:Why just documentation?

[Gid1]

That's not a "responsibility" or an "obligation". It is, however, an incentive, and should be quite a strong one at that.

Nowadays, I purchase equipment based more on its compatibility with FreeBSD (and occasionally OpenBSD) than any other factor (incl. performance and price), as that's what it's going to be used with.

As far as responsibility or obligation is concerned, Adaptec's got none to the Open Source community, unless you can consider it a direct failure of its responsibility to its shareholders. Just because Open Source is "fighting the good fight", doesn't mean anyone owes us anything.

Re:Why just documentation?

[NuclearDog]

"If you were Adaptec, would you write drivers for your hardware in Windows, a platform you're programmers are very experienced with and caters to the 90% marketshare, or write drivers for the niche 5% MacOS X or 5% other *nix market?"

If I was Adaptec I'd realize that most people who buy RAID hardware are not planning to run a desktop computer with Windows. They're likely planning to run some sort of server, which I'm sure have much more than 5% of users running a non-windows OS.

According to Netcraft, there are nearly 2500000 sites hosted on FreeBSD (source). This number does not include sites hosted on NBSD and OBSD (obviously).

"Everyone on here expects companies to spend millions in development and bend over backwards for their own purposes."

This wouldn't be millions in development. It would take one guy 10 minutes to e-mail the hardware specs (which they'd have to have available somewhere for them to have written their own driver) to the OpenBSD team and be done with it.

"Adaptec isn't interested in OpenBSD because it's not in their best financial interest, despite their best intentions."

Look at it this way, if you were a stockholder in Adaptec and were told millions of potential customers would not be able purchase your hardware because the company refused to release the specs for it, how would you feel?

ND

Simple solution...

[Hans Lehmann]

There's a very simple solution for this: Don't buy anything from Adaptec, ever. They'll be out of business; problem solved.

Threshold of complexity

[Crashmarik]

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.

Re:Tried e-mailing the guy....

[Ed Avis]

"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.

This is not incompatible with 'a business-benefiting attitude' and 'acting in business-benefiting ways'. William Gates Jr has built a very successful business by acting exactly in this manner. If you think geeks have a bad attitude and businessmen do not, perhaps it's just because geeks publish their nastygram messages on the web and businesses keep them secret.

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 think you have an incorrect assumption here. Theo de Raadt is not trying to get money. He is trying to improve a free operating system, OpenBSD.