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<H2><A NAME="s3">3. Other efforts</A></H2>
<P>There are other groups and individuals doing their parts in
trying to get various software and hardware vendors to support
Linux. Norman Jacobowitz is a consultant working with SSC, Inc.
on an advocacy project that approaches the same problem I'm
addressing here, although from a different direction. Here's
what he told me about his efforts:
<P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
SSC, Inc, publishers of Linux Journal, maintain a
"software wish list"
at &lt;http://www.linuxresources.com/wish&gt;. They are
currently paying an
outside consultant to use these results and other data to lobby
marketing managers at ISVs to port their products to Linux. This
is an
effective, on going project to bring more native software to
Linux; so
please drop by the wish list and vote for your favorite
software.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>Andrew Mayhew has been trying to convince hardware vendors
that making Linux drivers, or at least releasing the
specifications so the Linux community can write the drivers, is a
good idea. Here are his thoughts:
<P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
I go to conferences. I was most recently at
Networld-Interop in Atlanta (which was shortly followed by the
Atlanta
Linux Expo). There at Interop I went to many of the vendors with
two
agendas. First, I was there as a respresentative of the ISP that
I work
for and was looking for solutions. But secondly, I was there
find out who
currently had Linux support and if they didn't have Linux
support, why
they didn't and was the company considering it. It is
interesting to
note, that in the large Novell section, there were actually two
Linux
related sub-booths. Additionally, Cobalt Micro was there with
their thin
server, along with RedHat and Caldera. Fairly small showings in
a nearly
completely non-Unix related conference, but a showing none the
less.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
Most of the companies that I was talking to are primarily
hardware
vendors. They already don't make any money off of their drivers.
They
just need to develop the drivers so that people will use their
hardware.
My typical approach to one of these companies was to first ask
about the
product in general, so that they could get through their
marketing routine
quickly, and then ask about driver support. When the only words
out of
their mouths would be Windows 95, 98, and NT, I would ask about
other
platforms explaining that I run in a multiplatform environment
and would
need interoperability between these platforms. In introducing
the idea
that they should support other platforms I would only slowly work
in the
idea of Linux as one of them. I found that introducing the idea
that I
wanted driver support for Linux right off typically got me a
knee-jerk
reaction which would basically have the person shutdown and try
to find a
way to get out of the conversation. But if you can get their
defenses down then you can explain to them how, in
general, all they would need to invest to get Linux drivers would
be to
openly publish the specifications for talking to whatever
hardware and
possibly providing hardware to key developers. The biggest
argument to
this, is typically, "We have some proprietary ways of doing X and
don't
want to have that information out in the open." The usual way
around this
problem is to explain that being able to talk and use a device
does not
normally mean having to know what proprietary tricks they are
pulling. At
least this fits with the wireless LAN and the Fibre Channel IP
people that
I was dealing with.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
One smaller company, which I think may attempt to find
someone in the community to help develop a driver for them came
up with an interesting
solution around the proprietary issues as well. This being that
they
would have the initial developers sign NDAs for the hardware
documentation, but the source code could be open source so long
as the
documentation in the source was not just a copy of what the
company
provided the developer.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
For software companies, I think it is a very good idea to
point out that
there is nothing or very little available of their kind of
software;
whatever that area of software is. But it probably should also
be noted
what does exist. Of particular interest would be the development
tools,
the development support available, and possibly information about
other
porting projects. In terms of these other projects they would be
interested in the porting problems that they have solved or would
similarly be tackling.
</BLOCKQUOTE>
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