Proposal: "Legacy" Open Products Partition

From: Hotze <photze_at_batelco.com.bh>
Date: Thu May 7 21:56:48 1998

>On the other hand, since DEC, HP and Tektronix have all helped me with
>parts/docs for totally ancient machines, I am recomending those companies
>to others.


Exactly. This machine's a Compaq. Now, at the time, I solemnly thought
that they were the best PC's available. Now, since then, I've had problems
with the videocard, BIOS, busses, etc. When I contact their tech support,
in general, they'll give me any solution that costs money, or charge me
money for their time.


>Be careful here.

Ditto.
>Some companies believe that they _are_ responsible for the information,
>and any use to which it may be put. On several occasions I have been
>refused a service manual because 'If you try to repair it and make a
>mistake you could be killed' No amount of telling them that it's even
>more dangerous to do the repair without the service manual worked.


OK. So we'll need to say something like "No longer NEED be responsible for
information." They need to share it, not give it.

>It appears that there are too many lawyers who are there to put the blame
>on somebody else when the customer makes a mistakes. I am not happy about
>this, but....
>
>Some companies will release 'safe' information (software sources, CPU
>board schematics', but not 'dangerous' information (schematics of
>monitors and PSUs, for example).


I see. We'll need a disclaimer: "Anyinformation you recieve here could
ultimately be harardous to your heatlh. DO NOT OPERATE HEAVY MACHINERY
WHILE READING A TECHNICAL DOCUMENT." (Last sentence lighthearted.)
>If we do convince companies to release information, we'd need to have
>some proper legal document which removed any responsibility from the
>company. You use this info and hurt yourself - it's your fault.
Yep. Does anyone know how the GPL was made????
>> 2) Central orginazation. Something like GNU, but less proffesional. It
>> would contain all archives collected, as well as user-made enhancements,
>> notes or other docs. (For example: Getting a ST 251 to work under
>
>You'd need to make it very clear which notes were 'official' and which
>were 3rd party.
Ditto. Also, we'd need to prioritize companies. Companies that were most
likely to give us info first, and then less last. So that if we had 5 or 6
industry juggernauts giving us information, then possibly a company like
Sharp just might.
    Tim D. Hotze
Received on Thu May 07 1998 - 21:56:48 BST