Why Don't Companies Release Specs?

Mhrmnhrm asks: "With the recent activism by the OpenBSD crew focusing on release of documentation from the likes of Adaptec, Intel, and others, I'm left to wonder: why do companies insist on believing that by denying access to the specs, they somehow gain an advantage? It's not like telling a programmer how to communicate with the underlying hardware is going to tell them how it (the PCB/silicon) was designed, so why make this information secret?"

Comments

It goes something like this:

[vegetablespork]

Bill: I hear you're getting ready to release low level specs so the OpenBSD and Linux folks can make a driver.

Hardware Co. Rep.: That's right, Bill--figured it would be hard to go wrong increasing our potential market, at no cost to us. It's not like they can use the interface specs to build a card.

Bill: That's nice. You know, it'd be a real shame if your driver couldn't be WHQL certified, and users had to see a warning box when they ran with your card. Or worse, if there were mysterious blue screens . . .

Harware Co. Rep.: OK, I get your point, Bill. We'll cancel the release of the specs.

Re:It goes something like this:

[AnObfuscator]

Yes. I think so because microsoft DOES threaten hardware companies. It's been proven, in court, that microsoft does this sort of thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft#Monopoly_an d_legal_issues

In short, thinking that MS doesn't use its monopoly to intimidate PC & PC hardware makers is like believeing the world is still flat.

Re:Because it would cost them money

[elmegil]

Goody for you. When you and your friends who think like you are enough of a market share for them to care, their practices will change. Have fun.

Sorry for breaking /. traditions

[ThePhilips]

Sorry for breaking /. traditions. I have worked for three hardware companies. I'm working for one right now.

I'm not writing documentation, but seldom help with some technical details and help with translations.

Guys, just to understand the problem you have try first write something. Writing good documentation would require someone who can think straight and clearly. And as you can imaging if company got such guy/girl - s/he will be busy doing product itself, rather than documentation. That's first.

Second. On PC market change of technologies occurs every half of year or something like that. Writing documentation, getting thru all bureaucracy for confidential document to be released will be precisely about this half of year. In other words, when documentation is ready - it is already outdated. You can btw notice that industries with longer release cycles normally end-up with decent documentation - they have time and money. Having no money you cannot afford longer release cycle. Telcos are good example of that. Industrial automation is another one.

So PC industry is sort of its own worst enemy. Tight competition force producers to save where possible - e.g. optional component such as documentation. If you have some bright heads, producer can manage to update product line more often - edging against competitors - but again bright heads will be busy with product release, rather than its documentation.

Having dedicated personnel to handle documentation is just expensive.

P.S. One more problem is when product is partially based on some licensed third party development. Most small producers have to license things, since they cannot develop everything in house. Than it happens that documentation ends up with hell a lot of copy'n'pasting from third party one. To release that you have to get a permission from third party: but in most situations you will find out that third party has licensed some parts itself. In the end no-one just want to risk releasing the documentation, especially in litigious U.S.: most companies when finding their parts in someone's else released products may start asking for fees. With all consequences. Hiring experienced attorney for going thru all this licensing mess - and getting clearance from all involved parties - will cost a lot money, most producers just not able to afford.

Re:Because it would cost them money

[wastingtape]

I went into McDonalds last week and ordered prime rib with a side of potatoes. They wouldn't sell it to me.

When i go into a restraunt, i expect to order and get whatever i want. If they don't serve what i want, i won't eat there. Period. They just lost business from me. I know at least 20 people who tried to order steak from McDonalds and they wouldn't offer it, that's not counting the hundreds of people online who want all kinds of stuff that McDonald's doesn't sell.

I'm not saying that McDonalds should forsake thier demographics, target market, or any plans they had, but at least allow restraunt-goers a chance to eat whatever they want.

Re:Because it would cost them money

[imp]

You're telling me that they don't have internal documentation anyway?
How do they develop their own drivers, etc?

You've clearly never had to write a driver for hardware that's produced down the hall :-). Usually the hardware designer produces a interface document that tells you what he thinks you should know. Once you have this document, there's usually dozens upon dozens of questions that the software writer has about the device. For smaller operations, these questions usually are verbal or email and never make it back into the original spec. There are times that the specification is wrong, incomplete, missing information, etc. To assume that there's public consumable documentation for every piece of hardware doesn't match my many years of industry experience.

In addition to the cost of producing it, there's other issues. Did the company license some IP for their internal use? If so, can that IP be documented and sent out to third parties? Someone has to check to make sure the relevant legal contracts are followed. Next, did we develop some new and novel way of doing something that's covered by a patent? Is it ours our someone else's. Fear of lawsuits from third parties often drives a company to disclose as little as possible. On the 'simpler' devices, much of the information necessary to write a driver may be novel ways of, for example, encoding something in software that might otherwise be done in hardware. Sometimes these tricks may save lots of money for the hardware company who can sell modems $5 cheaper than their competitors. Why make it easy for them to understand your cleverness?

Finally there's good, old fashioned secrecy. Does Macy's tell Gimble's, as the old (now somewhat dated) adage goes. The idea here is that your competitors should have as difficult a time as inventing something as you did, and any hints or short-cuts that you can give them may eat into your profits. Maybe they make a hardware board that's compatible with your driver, this cutting the cost of their development time since they don't have to do the software. Who knows how this information will come back to bite you.

All of these effects on the bottom line are seen as swamping any increase in hardware/software sales to the open source crowd. Not that they are right about this (or wrong for that matter), just how they think.

Warner

Re:Time is money to make NDA'd docs publishable

[ComputerSlicer23]

In a lot of ways, yes it is a very small number. First off, I'm not sure which documentation you are discussing from NetCraft. A link would be useful, but I'm too lazy to dig one up. The two stats to remember, are that something like 80% of the domains out there in the world run non-Windows OS's (read people who probably need access to the documentation). I want to say, only 30% of the IP's (possibly physical machines) out there, run non-Window's OS's. So in the end, even on the Internet, Windows is fairly dominate in terms of "numbers of machines". Which is a crying shame in my opinion, but oh well (most hosting companies, use non-Windows machines for deployment).

Now, the number of machines on the acting as servers on the Internet is dwarfed by the number of machines not acting as servers on the Internet. Not a contest. Not even close to a contest. Finally, most hardware vendor's that produce high end hardware do get it. Look at the number of SCSI devices that have documentation or drivers. Not the crappy low end ones, but the really good stuff. Sorry, the crappy low end adaptec IDE RAID cards aren't ever going into a high end server. Most internet servers don't really need a good 3D card from Nvidia or ATI. Look at the e1000? Yep, got a lot of those sold, and some really good documentation available to the public. Now look at the wireless chipsets, never going in a server. Not going to get public release based off domination in the "NetCraft" stats. 90% of all wireless cards will never ever be put in a machine that is counted by "NetCraft". They will be put in machines that say, 90-95% of all shipping computers have a Microsoft OS on them.

So depending on the product, yes, the NetCraft numbers are insigificant, both in terms of percentage and raw numbers.

For other products, the NetCraft numbers make a lot of sense. Look at the number of Open Source drivers for high end SAN cards. Look at the number of Gigabit cards that have open source drivers. Look at the number of highend RAID cards that have open documentation.

The other thing they are confusing is "won't release specs", versus won't allow re-distribution of the firmware. For a lot of wireless cards, it's that they can't re-distribute the firmware which is necessary for the hardware to work, not that they don't have the specs for the actual hardware. (I believe a number of OpenBSD's issues with Wireless Intel chipsets are this issue). The other issue with Wireless is that releasing the specs could invite FCC issues. I'm not sure of how much teeth those could have, but it sounds like a legitimate concern. If the FCC could say, well people are using your part with your documentation to drive it out of complaince, your wireless cards can no longer be sold. That'd be a real problem for Intel or Cisco.

Finally, releasing the specs, would allow a competitor to say they clean room, backward engineered without having to do the documentation. It's really expensive to do that testing and documentation. So they could sell a competing product at a much lower price. It's much easier to match an existing specification, that it is to write a good known working specification. It is valuable IP. Personally, I think it's wonderful when they release it. For a lot of hardware they do. Especially for the really high end hardware that needs high reliability.

Kirby

Re:Because it would cost them money

[Xantharus]

The problem here though, is that McDonalds has never made the impression to anyone that they sell steak. Its like asking Adobe for full documentation on Windows; they have no idea.

Wouldnt full specifications from McDonalds actually be them telling you exactly what is in each Quarter-Pounder with Cheese, and exactly what happens behind the scenes when they cook it?

I dont know about you, but I think those are some specifications that are better left unreleased.

Nope

[zippthorne]

They already provide hamburgers to an open standard. Their product interfaces in the same way as all other hamburgers, directly with the mouth port.

Very fancy restaurants have proprietary interfaces: You are required to use specialized hooks (salad fork, etc.) to interface with the food which must be used in a specific way.

Chinese restaurants use the most difficult interface of all, but it's fairly simple and often fully documented on the chopsticks package.