On Saturday 23 December 2006 06:06, Chuckk Hubbard was like: > I don't follow that last part. I agree, SoundBlaster is embarrassing, > but they have the supply for a demand. Should hardware be free too? > Should everything be free? The relevant specifications should be freely available to make it possible to build decent 3rd party drivers. It would also be quite cool if manufacturers worked to some kind of agreed standard. New hardware will always have some kind of material value and it is understandable that manufacturers might be reluctant to reveal all the details of a piece of equipment's inner workings. I think it would be foolish to insist that hardware be 'free'. All we need to know from a software point of view, is how to communicate with the device. Surely releasing this information will only serve to make the device useable by more people? I think what we should be pushing for is free availability of the relevant specs. There is probably better terminology for this. -- cheers, tim hall http://glastonburymusic.org.uk/tim We are the people We've been waiting for.
