[openbeosnetteam] Re: porting FreeBSD's new netstack

Waldemar Kornewald <Waldemar.Kornewald@xxxxxx> wrote:
> Lars Hansson wrote:
> > Waldemar Kornewald wrote:
> > > The NDIS wrapper helps us to get market share.
> > I wasnt aware getting significant market share was a Haiku goal,
> > at east I havent seen it stated anywhere.
> Well, we want to become a good Desktop OS and we need market share to 
> get companies to write apps for Haiku. Otherwise Haiku will stay a 
> niche-product.

I don't care about market share for the next 10 years, but one of the 
main principles of the OS is to just work. It shouldn't restrict its 
userbase with limited hardware support.
I don't like NDIS and other driver wrappers, but they are certainly not 
evil. Despite of the success of Linux, many hardware manufacturers 
don't publish their specs. Some even support Linux but have precompiled 
object files to protect their IP. The only victim is the user because 
of inconsistent and hardly maintainable solutions.
We are a free software project, we don't even force those manufacturers 
to open their source. They may support their hardware with closed 
source drivers. As long as they do, I wouldn't even care, although I 
will never understand the reasoning behind these decisions.

Bye,
   Axel.

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