Dear Mr. Ketrenos, Mr. Awad. As one of your customers, using Open Source Operating Systems, for different purposes the following two materials
http://developer.osdl.org/dev/opendrivers/summit2006/james_ketrenos.pdf http://developer.osdl.org/dev/opendrivers/summit2006/james_ketrenos.mp3 did provide me with information on how Intel is supporting "Open Source". Unfortunately I found that what was said there is not really true. I would like to kindly bring to your notice the details of my observations. First of all let me bring to your notice that when you said about supporting Open Source you were just referring to Linux. There are many other Open Source Operating systems other than Linux and many of Intel's customers use them. So in order to call yourself as a company supporting Open Source you need to listen to developers of these projects and to your customers who use these other Operating Systems like OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, DragonflyBSD, OpenSolaris etc. as well To give an example I am typing this from an HP laptop that uses OpenBSD 3.9 Operating System. It has the Intel "PRO/Wireless 2200 BG" device. Intel has no official driver for this device in OpenBSD. The OpenBSD driver was written by Damien Bergamini. http://damien.bergamini.free.fr/ipw/ Now I would like to bring your attention to the 6th page of your PDF which has 4 points about how Intel supports Open Source that seems to me is not true. I would like to bring them to your notice if you did not know it already. Point 1 - Enable the community to do as much as possible In the mp3 you said Intel "really wants to take steps as much as you can to enable the community anywhere possible" But I had to download firmware for the above mentioned device manually from Bergamini's website. That is a shame :-( The firmware had an "un-free" distribution licence which prevented them to be included in the OpenBSD Distribution. The OpenBSD OS already has a lot of firmwares of other products shipped with it because they have a *free* licence for distribution. If Intel "really wants to take steps as much as it can to enable community anywhere possible" what is preventing it from making the the firmwares *freely distributable*? Please refer to http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openbsd-misc&m=115972630820403&w=2 if you want to get right information on how your licence restricts *free* distribution of these firmwares. Would you consider taking steps and changing the licence to be consistent with your First point? Now the second and Third Points. 2) Only keep internal those things the community cannot contribute to. 3) ...........document hardware sufficiently that the community can provide their own. The link below http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openbsd-misc&m=115960486810982&w=2 is a public mail from the author of the BSD driver who could not get documentation for the "Intel PRO/Wireless" products. Will Intel consider giving him and other developers the necessary documentation to be consistent with your public statements summarized in points 2 and 3? Now the fourth point. 4) Treat the community as a member of your internal team ( Listen, and respond to, their input and feedback ) It has been publicly brought to notice that the developers who has contacted Intel has been lied to about the facts. Is this the way Intel treats "a member of its internal team"? Please refer to the public statements below for details. http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=openbsd-misc&m=115971978209040&w=2 I am sure that both of you would have got similar mails from your customers regarding these issues. I do send this mail to a public list so others may add their comments and clarify/add things regarding these issues. Since your presentation promises us a lot we are eagerly looking forward towards the steps that Intel will take to be consistent with Its declaration to support open source and their customers. Thankyou so much. Kind Regards Siju
