Why FreeBSD not popular on hardware vendors

[Charlie Kester]

On Sat 13 Dec 2008 at 01:44:03 PST Chad Perrin wrote:
>
>I rather suspect that a much stronger, and more common, reason for
>obstinate refusal to open specs is the short-sightedness and general
>ignorance of daycoders and pointy-haired bosses -- all of whom think Java
>is the best programming language around because that's what "most"
>programmers use and have some vague, unsupported (but stubborn) notion
>that secrets are good for business.  At least it *seems* they all think
>so.

There's no need to impute any insidious or lazy motive to them.  If they
can sell their product without documenting any API's, they will tend to
do so, as a way of cutting costs and thus increasing their profits.

As for their "obstinate refusal", I think they often have a reasonable
fear that if they do provide documentation, it will create an ongoing
demand for support.  No matter how much effort you put into
documentation, there always seem to be some questions you haven't
answered, and people will be pestering you for the answers. More costs!
But once you've opened the door by publishing the documentation, it's
hard to close it gracefully.  So they probably figure it's better to
just say no at the outset.

(None of this has much of anything to do with FreeBSD, and I apologize
for replying to something off-topic.  But I felt I had to speak out
against an all-too-common prejudice.)