Microport Buyout ( was: Microport Status )

[Tom Frauenhofer]

In article <10317 at cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> tim at cit-vax.UUCP (Timothy L. Kay) writes:
>They do have one thing to offer, though.  Wouldn't it be nice if the
>device drivers they produced somehow end up in the public domain, or
>even better, in the hands of the Free Software Foundation?

Or someone of equal "moral fibre".

>Ideally, somebody could propose a mechanism whereby Microport (in the absence
>of an interested buyer) would donate their device drivers to the Free
>Software Foundation.


I proposed in an earlier posting that we develop the equivalent of a
"Free Driver Software Foundataion".  I don't believe that Microport will
give its drivers out without a fight,  and the fight could drag on for years
with us left in the lurch (this is not a "slam" at Microport - they're just
trying to determine the "fair market value" of their software - I'm not sure
if they have an inflated sense of what is "fair" or not, nor am I implying
that).

Why not instead write our own?  Yes, it would be a lot of work, and yes,
someone would have to co-ordinate the effort so we don't get, say, two people
doing identical serial drivers, but it could be feasible.  There already are
several PD drivers for Microport that I know of (the Lynx joystick driver
comes to mind).  I would be willing to provide a distribution mechanism
on my home BBS system (which also has anonymous UUCP capabilities).

Again, comments?

Thomas V. Frauenhofer	...!rutgers!rochester!cci632!ccird7!tvf
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