Xref: utzoo sci.electronics:5579 comp.periphs:1626
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!fmr
From: fmr@cwi.nl (Frank Rahmani)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics,comp.periphs
Subject: Re: Re: Proprietary hardware  (was Re: DataProducts LZR-1230 Laser info wanted)
Message-ID: <842@sering.cwi.nl>
Date: 17 Mar 89 16:16:08 GMT
References: <18167@gatech.edu>
Organization: CWI, Amsterdam
Lines: 30

> Xref: mcvax sci.electronics:4701 comp.periphs:1376
> I can think of quite a few reasons why a manufacturer would want to
> restrict the desimination of tech info
> 	They don't want competetors looking at it (see above).
Competitors do reverse engineering (and so do we end users when
we really want to know what's wrong with that box and the
vendor does't want to help or just went broke).
> 	They don't want people modifying the design (or just screwing
> 	it up) and then turning to the company to fix it (or get sued
> 	because an end-user modification caused someone harm).
and this is the only valuable reason
I can imagine if a company doesn't supply
schematics.
> 	Lots of money can be made by repairing things at the factory.
So could YOU earn a lot of money when
you had the schematics and an independent service company.
> I like the idea of a FHF.  Some friends and I have been discussing a
> 'public-domain workstation', a higher-end machine whose design is
> freely availible for anyone to build (look a the GNU license).  
For quite some time there was a vivid
discussion about this in comp.sys.nsc.32k around
a machine built upon the National semiconductor 32xxx chip
set and as far as I recall complete systems but also designs
where offered under what you can call FHF.
fmr@cwi.nl
-- 
It is better never to have been born. But who among us has such luck?
Maintainer's Motto:
	If we can't fix it, it ain't broke.
These opinions are solely mine and in no way reflect those of my employer.