From: badger@phylo.life.uiuc.edu (Jonathan Badger) Subject: Re: Why not include patches for Diamond Stealth in kernel? Date: Mon, 8 Feb 1993 20:36:49 GMT
You write:
> As I understand it, this is not a simple boycott issue. There is a
>real concern about being sued by Diamond. Apparently Diamond considers the
>programming details of their card proprietary, and anyone who writes a driver
>and then makes the source code publicly available has left themselves exposed
>as they say. Until Diamond's attitude changes it simply would not be prudent
>to include support for Diamond in the kernel or in Xfree.
It is time to clear this up. All the patches do is set a video board into
VESA mode using the BIOS. The code would work on ANY board, Diamond or no.
You see, what is wrong here is that people think Diamond's hardware is
without a free API. It does have an API -- it's called the BIOS, and it
works perfectly well, as the fact that I am typing this in Seyon on my
Stealth equipped machine attests. However some people have a religious feeling
against using the BIOS (it's more manly to write to the hardware directly!).
Great for them, but let's not let them hold the rest of us down.