Re: Intel Etherexpress Pro/100

Ulrich Windl (Ulrich.Windl@rz.uni-regensburg.de)
Thu, 2 May 1996 13:51:23 +0200


On 2 May 96 at 12:31, Paul Gortmaker wrote:

> John Rumpelein (jmr@gun.cabi.net)
> Tue, 30 Apr 1996 11:51:53 -0700 (PDT)
>
> > Does anyone know the status of the driver for the Inter EtherExpress
> > Pro/100? I have an NT box here that is just dying to run linux/X.
>
> There is a "draft driver" by Donald which is avail from:
>
> http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/eepro100.html
>
> Apparently the intel boys managed to avoid the usual NDA cruft for
> Donald somehow. The page says the following:
>
> ----------------------------
> Thanks to Steve Williams, Steven_D_Williams@ccm.jf.intel.com,
> and Terry Crawford of Intel for sorting out the incompatibilities
> of the standard Intel NDA and the Linux/GPL source code release
> terms. They provided a pair of EtherExpress Pro 100B cards as well.
> ----------------------------
[Another off-topic]
I guess the Intel people also wanted to sell their cards. Maybe they
just wanted to "play Linux". In former times when software was still
free, usually you got good manuals for the expensive pieces of
hardware. But now the hardware gets cheaper and the software more
expensive. Thus companies are making money with software. Sometimes
it's that simple. But if some company does not support an OS like
Linux, the company should allow people to use their harware with
their software. I mainly use Linux at home, and I deliberately
selected my hardware so that it would work with Linux.
>
> Paul.
Ulrich