Yeah the fly in the ointment is product differentiation. Consistent with what the hardware provides, Teh HaXX0Rs will give the possibility for every option on every device. This is the exact opposite of what ripper "Marketing" scum like Microsoft want, with their 20 flavours of Vista all off the same DVD (see, eg, <a class="user" href="http://bink.nu/Article5025.bink">http://bink.nu/Article5025.bink</a> ). They want to sell "keys" to enable them to close off functionality on the same hardware -- yeh your hardware, not Microsoft's -- that it is inherently capable of. Put another way, unless you pay for "all you can eat" then Microsoft's solutions deliberately and for no reason other than their profit limit what you can do with your hardware.Choices around keeping with prorietary or going Free keep getting clearer and clearer.
Of course they are "hindering", they're using proprietary software because that's how they differentiate.What are they supposed to do? Help the Linux community make them hardware manufacturer that has to compete with the same Linux firmware found in cheap Asian hardware? How smart is that.
While it would be beneficial to the consumer... The manufacterer wants the ability to sell you their high end products at a markup instead of the cheesy home router that you can hack it right up to par for a small office. $60 for the home router... $500+ for cisco. I'm surprised they even continue to sell the linux version and the memory limitation just proves that they were afraid of direct competition with themselves.
I don't understand why more vendors don't expose SDKs for their hardware products. Consider the Logitech Orbit MP, a web cam w/ vision tracking. If they provide an SDK many hobbyist will build applications on top of it. We can't build our own web cam so we have to buy their hardware. The network effect makes their hardware more valuable. Sell more webcams, profit!Of course, they have to protect against cheap knockoffs, but that's already an issue today. They protect themselves with patents and copyrights. Also, if they control the API then they'll keep developers on their web cam.
Hindering open-source development my ass. They're only hindering _themselves_ by not making use of a robust scalable secure highly debugged zero-cost (the list goes on) per unit software.
warmcatJul 17, 2006
Yeah the fly in the ointment is product differentiation. Consistent with what the hardware provides, Teh HaXX0Rs will give the possibility for every option on every device. This is the exact opposite of what ripper "Marketing" scum like Microsoft want, with their 20 flavours of Vista all off the same DVD (see, eg, <a class="user" href="http://bink.nu/Article5025.bink">http://bink.nu/Article5025.bink</a> ). They want to sell "keys" to enable them to close off functionality on the same hardware -- yeh your hardware, not Microsoft's -- that it is inherently capable of. Put another way, unless you pay for "all you can eat" then Microsoft's solutions deliberately and for no reason other than their profit limit what you can do with your hardware.Choices around keeping with prorietary or going Free keep getting clearer and clearer.
abuserJul 17, 2006
Of course they are "hindering", they're using proprietary software because that's how they differentiate.What are they supposed to do? Help the Linux community make them hardware manufacturer that has to compete with the same Linux firmware found in cheap Asian hardware? How smart is that.
lvdrummerJul 17, 2006
While it would be beneficial to the consumer... The manufacterer wants the ability to sell you their high end products at a markup instead of the cheesy home router that you can hack it right up to par for a small office. $60 for the home router... $500+ for cisco. I'm surprised they even continue to sell the linux version and the memory limitation just proves that they were afraid of direct competition with themselves.
projectshaveJul 17, 2006
I don't understand why more vendors don't expose SDKs for their hardware products. Consider the Logitech Orbit MP, a web cam w/ vision tracking. If they provide an SDK many hobbyist will build applications on top of it. We can't build our own web cam so we have to buy their hardware. The network effect makes their hardware more valuable. Sell more webcams, profit!Of course, they have to protect against cheap knockoffs, but that's already an issue today. They protect themselves with patents and copyrights. Also, if they control the API then they'll keep developers on their web cam.
Closed AccountJul 17, 2006
In other news, rain determined to hinder dry-spells.
jonforthewinJul 17, 2006
Hindering open-source development my ass. They're only hindering _themselves_ by not making use of a robust scalable secure highly debugged zero-cost (the list goes on) per unit software.