Re: [9fans] Are nvidia-cards working with plan9?

[jiho@smtp.popsite.net]

In article <20001009114925.A29182@cackle.proxima.alt.za>,
	lucio@proxima.alt.za (Lucio De Re) writes:

>> Actually, I wasn't laying blame, I was just alluding
>> to _de_facto_ reality.
>
> Well, Wall Street is just a special-interest group :-)

Yes, that certainly is a _de_facto_ reality.

>> There's a small matter of U.S. anti-trust law, and a
>> principle known as "fair access to essential
>> facilities".  It dates back to the railroad tycoons,
>> fer cryin' out loud.  Ironically, the case has been
>> made against Microsoft software.  It's even more
>> obvious with respect to chips, but as far as I know
>> (not very far) no one has tried making the case.
>
> The stated reason for not pursuing the case with the full might of
> the law was that _all_ IT companies had broken the law for years
> (software that ran only on some hardware, applications that ran
> only on given operating environment, etc) and the can of worms
> would have been far too big a problem...

Well, the stated reason is wrong.  There is a "reasonableness
clause" in the law, such that the remedy _cannot_ be unreasonably
onerous.

Requiring anyone who writes software to port and support on all
possible platforms would clearly be unreasonably onerous.

Chip companies, however, already have register-level documentation
for their own internal use, so making it public is not itself
onerous at all, especially with the Internet.  And support should
not be required, beyond keeping the documentation reasonably up
to date.

In other words, the circumstances are simply not comparable.  OS
writers shouldn't have to port to all hardware, and application
writers shouldn't have to port to all OSes.  However, OS companies
should have to provide reasonable documentation to all application
writers, and hardware complanies should have to provide reasonable
documentation to all OS writers.

> So we're lumped with legislation without teeth.  And the rest of
> the world is hardly likely to step into the US Government shoes
> and risk technological boycotts while they try to catch up :-(

It's not the legislation that lacks teeth.


--Jim Howard  <jiho@mail.c-zone.net>