On Wed, 7 Mar 2001, Scott Franzyshen wrote:

> They are in Business and the only thing they are promoting is their
> profit($).
> It is not a secret that they would prefer you to buy($) their product.

sure.. if you had the choice of making profit with your work, you probably
would.

and dont forget, they gave us a working driver with which in fact you can
do MORE things as with the windows-driver (think of the AP-mode for which
you would have to pay for windows !)

i think if someone writes code and releases it as open source, this is a
wonderfull thing and one should take it as a gift

and the most important thing with open source is:

IF you dont like the way things are done, CHANGE IT.

this was one of the first advantages mentioned with linux: if there is
something you dont like, change it.

and in open source projects, you CAN actually change them !

take a windows-driver. even if it is free, you dont have the garantee that
it works and if it doesnt, you have not many chances to get it working,
even if there may be a (probably non-free) support.

and if they decide to remove part of the project (prism2dl) thats their
decision and their right. if you dont like this, you still have enough
ways to get the lost part (as seen here) or rewrite it

> You can of course hunt and peck your way through the cryptic (UN-DOCUMENTED)
> releases of the driver, but
> do not expect even the slightest of (non-commercial) support. If you are a
> novice .... good luck!

you got a driver for free, what do you expect ?
life isnt cheap and for the most things you have to pay

for windows you pay 100$ and if it doesnt work the way you want, what do
you want to do ? buy an update for another 100$ ?

and "no support" isnt truth. you have this mailinglist, which is a very
great support even if the author of the software doesnt answer questions
himself

i thank everybody in this mailinglist for the great help with the
prism2-cards

> Yes, the gentlemen at absoval.com have provided us with at least this much!
> and they don't owe the Linux community ANYTHING! I guess the Linux community
> (including myself) have just come to expect more from an open source
> project. Selectively releasing source (in my opinion) is NOT open source.

open source means that you can get the source not more. it doesnt include
support and it doesnt force the author to make every little change public.

> I guess time will tell whether absoval.com will make any more excesses as to
> why they don't (can't) support Ad-Hoc, AP, WEP, etc. Is it really a fear of
> being sued ... or is it that they don't want to risk the edge they have in
> this industry?
>
> I would bet that their $20,000.00 product has FULL documentation, more
> advanced features, oh and lets not forget ... support.

if someone gives you a gift, saying a guitar, then you dont expect that he
will also pay you the lessons to learn playing, do you ?

but please dont misunderstand my posting, i have nothing against you
personally, this is just my opinion :-)
i hope i expressed this well, my english may not be the best...

Gruß,
Thorsten
__________________________________________________________
Thorsten Jungblut
Universität Koblenz, Fachbereich Informatik
tjungbluuni-koblenz.de -> ask for pgp public key

--------------------------------------------------
Linux WLAN Developer's List
For more information about this list see:
http://www.absoval.com/linux-wlan/lists.html

• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]