[nycbug-talk] Centrino support in BSD operating systems (fwd)

[Louis Bertrand]

My contribution. Dunno if it will help.

Ciao
 --Louis  <louis at bertrandtech dot ca>



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 22:52:40 -0400 (EDT)
From: Louis Bertrand <louis at bertrandtech.ca>
To: roxanne.r.gryder at intel.com, vivek.g.gupta at intel.com, keith.holt at intel.com,
     changwen.liu at intel.com, art.martin at intel.com, joe.pitarresi at intel.com,
     emily.h.qi at intel.com, john.sadowsky at intel.com, charlie.tai at intel.com,
     james.mike.wilson at intel.com, salwan.searty at intel.com,
     salwan.searty at intel.com, crystal.xiong at intel.com, jketreno at linux.intel.com,
     boyd.bangerter at intel.com, eric.a.jacobsen at intel.com,
     duncan.kitchin at intel.com, uriel.lemberger at intel.com, ali.s.sadri at intel.com,
     adrian.p.stephons at intel.com, chih.c.tsien at intel.com,
     jesse.walker at intel.com
Cc: Louis Bertrand <louis.bertrand at durhamcollege.ca>
Subject: Centrino support in BSD operating systems

Hello,

First, please accept my apologies for apparently "spamming"
several email addresses at Intel. The list I have is said
to include persons who may set or influence firmware and
intellectual property policy at Intel. I would appreciate
having the correct contact information for an official with
the authority to set or influence this policy.

I would like to add my voice to the pleas to support BSD
licensed operating systems such as OpenBSD, FreeBSD and
NetBSD with the Centrino laptop and wireless chipset. The
BSD operating systems are unable to include Intel firmware
because of restrictive licensing on the binary-only portion.

I urge Intel to change its policy and open source this
component. Intel's dominance of the market is clearly due to
aggressive fabrication technology that yields high performance
small geometry components, not some "secret sauce" hardware
interface. There would be little loss of market advantage in
releasing the source code. In fact, such a move would signal
a thawing in the traditionally "cold war" relationship Intel
has had with open source operating system developers. As well,
the generous BSD license could mean that the reliable and
secure code written by BSD developers would be available for
Intel's own use internally, and in products.

I currently teach full time in the Computer Systems Technology
program at Durham College (www.durhamcollege.ca). Our school
and our sister institution (www.uoit.ca) leases IBM Thinkpads
to students as part of the academic program. Having BSD operating
systems as part of my teacher toolkit would be an asset.

Thanking you for your attention,

Louis Bertrand  <louis at bertrandtech dot ca>

http://www.bertrandtech.on.ca/

OpenBSD: Secure by default.  http://www.openbsd.org/