Adaptec AAC raid support

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Charles Swiger [mailto:cswiger at mac.com]
> Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2005 3:43 PM
> To: Ted Mittelstaedt
> Cc: misc at openbsd.org; Theo de Raadt; freebsd list
> Subject: Re: Adaptec AAC raid support
>
>
> Maybe I was thinking of the PERC 3, then-- this one:
>

In that case Dell is a customer of Adaptec, not the other way around,
so any NDA that Dell might require for Adaptec to sign would not
have restricted Adaptec's use of it's own programming documentation.

>
> > And as for the i860, there's tons of programming docs on the
> Internet
> > out
> > there for it, once again, it's already open.
>
> You've failed to address the point.  Do you claim that Adaptec is in a
> position to ignore an NDA they have with a company like Intel or Dell?
>

The point is they obviously don't have an NDA with Intel since the
programming docs for the i860 are open already.  (at least the don't
have an NDA that covers this aspect of their relationship, which is all
we care about)

The original point you were attempting to make, as I understand it,
is that any of Adaptec's chip suppliers could have placed Adaptec
under an NDA which would have forced Adaptec to then place an NDA on
anyone wanting to write drivers for their products.

The point I made was that Adaptec is such a large customer and represents
such a large amount of money in sales to any chip vendor, that if any
chip vendor of Adaptec's attempted to force Adaptec into an NDA, Adaptec
would simply tell them if the NDA was a requirement they would just
go buy silicone from someone else who wasn't insistent on an NDA.  The
supplier would then have a choice of losing millions in sales or
not forcing Adaptec to sign an NDA.  I think it's obvious that no
supplier would force an NDA, and given Adaptec's size today, it's obvious
that no current vendor supplying them has them under such a thing
for this reason.  Despite what you seem to think, companies on the
whole always seek to avoid signing NDAs as they just give people grounds
to
sue them.

>
> I'm not interested in sophistry about Theo's "moral obligations" to
> OpenBSD users.
>
> The basis for my position is simply one of "does the system
> work better after the change"?  The AAC driver now in OpenBSD evidently
works well
> enough that thousands of OpenBSD users would be critically affected by
> its removal.  I'm perfectly willing to disagree with people who feel
> that breaking OpenBSD is a constructive action, and all the egocentric
> posturing does nothing to hide the nature of this change.  Quite the
> contrary, in fact.
>

Well I think Theo's point is that OpenBSD is already broken by the
introduction of this incomplete driver, and his action to remove it
is rather fixing the problem, not breaking anything.

> I would never choose to do business either with Theo or with
> you, to be
> very honest.  I don't think I could rely on you to act
> sensibly even in
> your own best interest, much less be reliable acting together in a
> mutually beneficial partnership.
>

I couldn't possibly do business with anyone who does not have a
moral compass of any sort.  The people who run their business
purely on what they term "sensible mutually beneficial interest"
or whatever terms you seem to use, are dangerous.  In a blink
of an eye if conditions change, they are screwing their customers
and their partners.

I *I* ever agreed to work with you in a partnership, I would complete
the term of the partnership, even if it became non-mutually
beneficial before the agreed on end came about.  That is far more
than you can say to me.

There comes a time in any business where you are faced with a
decision of do you do the right thing, or do you do the convenient
thing?  Theo feels that leaving AAC in is the convenient thing, not
the right thing.  He has a strong philosophical, moral, argument
for this.  I disagree with some of the foundation of this argument,
but I think that it IS a consistent, moral argument.

I do happen to agree that whether or not thousands of OpenBSD users
would be affected by AAC's removal is less important than OpenBSD not
rewarding vendors like Adaptec who don't provide programming docs.
If leaving AAC in there does reward a vendor who isn't doing the
right thing, then yes, pull it out.  I don't agree that leaving it in
is rewarding Adaptec, but I do agree that IF it were so, that pulling
AAC is the right thing to do.

People like yourself who seem to distain doing business with a moral
compass are the same ones that make decision after decision that
makes you slide further and further down the slope.  So, they leave in
AAC because a few thousand users would be affected.  Then, what do
they say to the next vendor that comes along who wants them to include
one of their own proprietary drivers?  Keep that up and pretty soon
the entire driver set in the operating system is binary proprietary
drivers, and you have lost control of the distribution.  Theo is
putting down his foot now, before things get that bad.  This I feel
is a decision that will hurt him in the short run, but in the long
run he will be better off.  I may not agree with it, but I respect it,
which is a lot more than I can say for your argument for keeping AAC.

Ted