FireWire = i.LINK = IEEE 1394 = free?
on
Is firewire dying?
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· Score: 1
This article that I was reading on the Adaptec web site states that you pay Apple a licensing fee for a fireWire designated product (Sony probably charges a licensing fee for i.LINK as well). It implies that you don't owe apple any fee for a product that follows the IEEE 1394 spec. And since all three are equivalent this would effectively mean that nobody is forced to pay Apple (or Sony) for building a fireWire compatible device.
It doesn't make sense that IEEE would develop a spec for something that was already patented. Did Apple waive it's patent to get IEEE approval?
It is interesting to note that on this issue, which is exactly opposite from what usually happens, the FUD seems to be mostly coming from WITHIN the Open/Free software community (or at least the/. community). As was noted earlier, the linked article, is written by someone in Sun and not Netscape/AOL and does not really trash the project. Certainly not as much as people are trashing the project here. A number of comments here talk about the failure of Mozilla. If anyone has followed Mozilla at all, they would hopefully see that this is not the case.
By whose standards is Mozilla a failure? Maybe by Commercial software standards but certainly not by Open/Free software standards. The Mozilla development effort has been open now for about a year and half. If you subtract another six months for initial growing pains and the decision to abandon the original rendering engine, you have a very nifty piece of software nearing the beta stage in only a years time. What other Open/Free software project of such scale can boast such a short development time. Granted this is mostly because Netscape continues to supply paid and experienced developers to the project, which is a luxury most other projects don't have. Nonetheless this seems more like success than failure to me.
Many people have commented that don't really care much about web browser development. We should care. Having a unified cross platform browser that supports the latest W3C standards is one of the best arguments for choosing to use Linux, Amiga, OS/2 or any other alternative platform (alternative to Wintel). People are more likely to choose or stay with an alternative platform if they know that at the very least they can surf everything out there on the web.
You can bet that as more and more networked devices like set-top and palm devices become prevalent, the browser will be the most prominent piece of software that users of these devices will be exposed to. Wouldn't it be nice if that software was Open/Free.
Darrel Y
p.s. My apoligies for using the Open/Free wording to try and not offend people that have a preference for one or the other, while at the same time annoying everyone.
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that I was reading on the Adaptec web site states that you pay Apple a
licensing fee for a fireWire designated product (Sony probably charges
a licensing fee for i.LINK as well). It implies that you don't owe
apple any fee for a product that follows the IEEE 1394 spec. And
since all three are equivalent this would effectively mean that nobody
is forced to pay Apple (or Sony) for building a fireWire compatible device.
It doesn't make sense that IEEE would develop a spec for something that
was already patented. Did Apple waive it's patent to get IEEE approval?
It is interesting to note that on this issue, which is exactly opposite from what usually happens, the FUD seems to be mostly coming from WITHIN the Open/Free software community (or at least the /. community). As was noted earlier, the linked article, is written by someone in Sun and not Netscape/AOL and does not really trash the project. Certainly not as much as people are trashing the project here. A number of comments here talk about the failure of Mozilla. If anyone has followed Mozilla at all, they would hopefully see that this is not the case.
By whose standards is Mozilla a failure? Maybe by Commercial software standards but certainly not by Open/Free software standards. The Mozilla development effort has been open now for about a year and half. If you subtract another six months for initial growing pains and the decision to abandon the original rendering engine, you have a very nifty piece of software nearing the beta stage in only a years time. What other Open/Free software project of such scale can boast such a short development time. Granted this is mostly because Netscape continues to supply paid and experienced developers to the project, which is a luxury most other projects don't have. Nonetheless this seems more like success than failure to me.
Many people have commented that don't really care much about web browser development. We should care. Having a unified cross platform browser that supports the latest W3C standards is one of the best arguments for choosing to use Linux, Amiga, OS/2 or any other alternative platform (alternative to Wintel). People are more likely to choose or stay with an alternative platform if they know that at the very least they can surf everything out there on the web.
You can bet that as more and more networked devices like set-top and palm devices become prevalent, the browser will be the most prominent piece of software that users of these devices will be exposed to. Wouldn't it be nice if that software was Open/Free.
Darrel Y
p.s. My apoligies for using the Open/Free wording to try and not offend people that have a preference for one or the other, while at the same time annoying everyone.