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

[Jim Choate ravage@ssz.com]

On Fri, 12 May 2000 geoff@x.bell-labs.com wrote:

> 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.

Exactly, the reason it was 'open' then was there was no real competition.

The licensing agreements were still there. If you don't believe it then
try to explain the comments on pp. xi or the back cover of,

Lion's Commentary on Unix, 6th ed.
John Lions
ISBN 1-57398-013-7

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