On Tuesday 14 October 2008 17:47:06 Bill Gatliff wrote: > Tom Cooksey wrote: > > > <RANT> > > What I don't understand is that I'm trying to do some pretty interesting & cool > > stuff with their processors (of course I would say that!), which will probably > > help them sell more units. Why then do they make it so difficult to work with > > them? It feels like they're shooting themselves in the foot. Madness. > > </RANT> > > Not to perpetuate this further, but I can't resist... :) > > That's because their product won't stand on its own; it needs vendor lock-in to > be successful. There really isn't any other explanation for such behavior. > > Think like a biologist. If an organism does something, then the upside must be > better then the downside of NOT doing that something, or the organism wouldn't > waste scarce time and energy doing it--- no matter how ridiculous that something > might be. Unusual markings, mating calls, mullet haircuts... > > One would think that in the world of high-technology, there would be a huge > upside to making products easy to use, which would naturally require free > availability of documentation and code (among other things). But vendors seem > to work contrary to that objective, which must mean that there's an even bigger > upside to NOT making a product easy to use. > > Put another way, their revenue stream depends on making your life as painful as > possible, so that you won't want to risk repeating that pain by switching to a > competitor's product. It's a "shock collar ^K^K^K electrically-enhanced > training aid", so to speak, and we're the dogs. And not the > chihuahua-in-Paris-Hilton's-purse kind of dogs, either. > > Here's more evidence to support my point: what exactly is the cost to release > documentation without an NDA? About US$0, which is considerably less than the > expense of executing an NDA. So why have the NDA? Because that expense must be > an "investment" in something that nets a larger return to the vendor of the > documents in question. What might that be? Hmmm.... I always assumed it's because releasing the source opens them up to patent infringement law suits? Some companies are more paranoid than others. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-embedded" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
