[9fans] hardware documentation (was Plan 9 future)

[geoff@x.bell-labs.com geoff@x.bell-labs.com]

Mr. Choate writes:
> Again misreprensentation.  [...] Second, BSD has never had as large a
> community and if BDS got access to hardware it was because somebody
> paid the vendors licenseing fee (usualy Berkley or a derived
> authority), it was not like with Linux where the vendor releases the
> info Open Source.

In fact, before Microsoft's dominance and ability to bully
manufacturers, it was possible, indeed easy, to acquire programmers'
documentation for peripherals, because it was in the manufacturers'
best interest to make it freely available.  And nowadays ``Linux'' is
the ``Open Sesame'' that sometimes works to dislodge hardware
documentation, though that's due to politics not technological
excellence of Linux.