Martin Paljak wrote: > > R5C822 (http://www.ricoh.com/LSI/product_pcif/pcc/5c821/index.html). > > According to the homepage the chip is discontinued however HP > > still delivers them in their brand new models, 8440p for example, > > god knows why. Is there any chance that we would see some support > > on these chipsets under Linux ? > > This has been discussed before [2] on MUSCLE mailing list. I doubt > it will happen [3].
Unfortunately I'd say you are quite right, Martin. HP do not make the computers they sell. There's a small group of companies called ODMs, Original Design Manufacturer, typically in Taiwan, which design and manufacture pretty much all consumer electronics today. The ODMs have the documentation for the chips, but they have typically signed absurdly strict NDAs with the chip makers. Some chip makers welcome the open source community and try to help them out, others run away screaming. (Or decline politely.) Unless the chip vendor wants to help, be it officially, or unofficially, through some side channel, then reverse engineering is the only way to get a device supported, but that requires tremendous amounts of work, it can't really be justified economically by 500 users, or even 5000. :\ The (not-so-)quick fix would be in procurement. An open source aware organization must factor software support into purchasing decisions, maybe together with the group(s) which create technical requirements in the organization, so the relevant pieces of hardware can be ignored. The purchasing task is hard, specifically because of the gap between OEMs (HP, Lenovo, Dell, etc) and ODMs. There's maybe a handful of people at HP worldwide who really know the details of components in the systems they sell. There is no channel from consumers with a clue to peers within the very long production chain for the products we hold in our hands. //Peter _______________________________________________ opensc-devel mailing list opensc-devel@lists.opensc-project.org http://www.opensc-project.org/mailman/listinfo/opensc-devel
