Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on November 13, 2006 04:08 PM
Sadly, no, it's not a new problem. Check out <a href="http://www.vendorwatch.org/" title="vendorwatch.org">http://www.vendorwatch.org/</a vendorwatch.org> for some prominent examples.
Here's one. Level One, Inc., with their NetCelerator LXT1001 Gigabit Ethernet chipset, was problematic this way since at least the year 2000. That's why it wasn't supported in stock FOSS kernels until this year (2006) with OpenBSD 3.9. There was a GPL'd Linux driver for kernel 2.4.2, but it wasn't in the official Linus kernel. Without specs, that driver became too difficult to maintain and effectively died, since Level One, Inc. had no interest in maintaining it. It took several years, and an Intel buyout, for those specs to finally become available.
Adaptec is also problematic with their RAID cards, as are Highpoint and Promise. LSI RAID chipsets, on the other hand, have always been very well supported and are strongly recommended for this reason.
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Re:New problem?
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on November 13, 2006 04:08 PMHere's one. Level One, Inc., with their NetCelerator LXT1001 Gigabit Ethernet chipset, was problematic this way since at least the year 2000. That's why it wasn't supported in stock FOSS kernels until this year (2006) with OpenBSD 3.9. There was a GPL'd Linux driver for kernel 2.4.2, but it wasn't in the official Linus kernel. Without specs, that driver became too difficult to maintain and effectively died, since Level One, Inc. had no interest in maintaining it. It took several years, and an Intel buyout, for those specs to finally become available.
Adaptec is also problematic with their RAID cards, as are Highpoint and Promise. LSI RAID chipsets, on the other hand, have always been very well supported and are strongly recommended for this reason.
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