> Just so everyone is clear: We (IBM) do not like to resort to OCO
could have fooled me.
> but in this world it is the only way to protect the intellectual property
> present in the drivers.
Oh you mean your network card has something that all the hundreds of others
don't have ? Your patent department knows how to deal with that for
sure..... Unless you want to keep secret a breach of someone else's patent;
or maybe that it's just a stock $15 NIC you guys sell for $8k ?
> If the drivers weren't OCO, anyone could step up to the challenge to
> provide support. But, when all the shouting is over, IBM or its delegate
> is the one who provides support for its OCO modules, not the Open Source
> community at large.
What's the point here? IBM can't support the driver if it's open source?
Extra eyes usually make support simpler because bugs are found (and fixes
provided!!) by others.
> It is obvious that many on this list have differing views about what the
> word "support" means. By that, I mean more than just doing some coding. I
> mean that IBM will fix something that isn't working. That promise is not
> trivial and actually costs IBM real dollars to provide. We have people
> that design, code, test, and document our drivers. When there's a new
> driver, there's more testing. That means tying up REAL resources (people
> and machines).
And adding free community resources to that is not something IBM is
interested in? Your ad campains may have fooled me there....
> I *know* this is frustrating to many and I am sorry for that, but we would
> rather focus our efforts on opening up the interface (a difficult task at
> best, with lots of legal complications) and eliminate the need for OCO
> drivers altogether. This is where the win/win is to be found.
Somehow I doubt this extra layer will fix the poor performance the current
drivers already have.... Given how some of the other s390 kernel code works,
I wouldn't be surprised that once you guys open up the driver some of the
linux networking experts fixes the performance issues in a matter of days.
> In the meantime, solutions can be had simply by routing your "new Linux" IP
> traffic through a "certified Linux" which owns the adapters.
You mean using that IBM kernel which has *KNOWN* and *PUBLISHED* local and remote
exploits? No thank you. If IBM actually puts such a kernel on customers
machines then I see that as deliberatly selling a defective product; US tort
laws have ways with dealing with that last I heard.
This year IBM spent a lot of money on Linux, a lot of that in advertising on
how great Linux is. IBM: this would be a call to put your actions where your
mouth is.
Greetings,
Arjan van de Ven
