Questions drivers for VGA and NIC

[Da Rock]

On Thu, 2008-10-02 at 10:25 -0400, Jerry McAllister wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 06:04:24PM -0400, Jerry wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 23:25:19 +0200 (CEST)
> > Wojciech Puchar <wojtek at wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> wrote:
> > 
> > >> In all likelihood, the probability of any vendor creating FBSD
> > >> specific drivers is directly proportionate to the expenditure of
> > >> funds to create and maintain the driver versus the expected revenue
> > >> from such an expenditure.  
> > >
> > >giving out a specs will be the simplest way.
> > 
> > Any entity, or corporation, has a right to expect a return on their
> > investment. To expect a corporation to simply give away something,
> > thereby depriving their shareholders, partners or whatever, of their
> > rightfully expected monetary reward is foolish. It certainly is not a
> > well thought out  business model.
> 
> First, in cases like this, giving out the specs so someone can write 
> a good driver could increase their sales of cards which could, in 
> turn, increase their profit.    So, it would help their business
> rather than hurt it.   They do not sell those drivers.   They just
> use them to sell video cards.    Since the lack of a driver that
> works in FreeBSD limits their sales of video cards, then they are 
> making the business mistake you are indicating, only in a reverse 
> sort of way.
> 
> 
> Second, and very important.    No corporation has any right to expect
> a return on their investment.   Investment is always a risk.  They
> might hope for a return, but they will have to work for it.  They will
> be fortunate to get it.   More business ventures fail than succeed.
> 
> Maybe it is only a case of using the wrong word, but it is still
> important to remember that there is no guarantee of profit.   That
> was the big failing of price controls - that the government got
> in to the business of guaranteeing profits and then the whole thing
> fell apart.

Ok, so this is in reply to the previous message on this thread as well
as this one. Based on what is said here (and I agree totally), then the
NDA would be only on the actually insider specs of the card- you'd have
to be a savant to extrapolate the actual guts of the card solely based
on the driver (in particular the special features in the hardware- if
they're not public knowledge anyway). So why the big hush hush then?

NDA signed and obviously a contract drawn which everyone agrees to-
manufacturer and programmer. Any reason why this wouldn't work? I know
of some that do this (ie m-Audio and OSS).