Crossroads

[Martin Lefkowitz]

The Prism is not getting much traction in the market.  The company has
been bounced around from owner to owner.  I would think that using the
prism in a design would be very risky because the chip may not be around
for the life of the product.


Marty

> Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 16:55:49 +0100
> From: Harald Welte <laforge at openmoko.org>
>
>   
>> > Although it has a closed firmware, I found this announcement
>> > http://maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-developers/2006-April/003575.html
>> > with no replies on the maemo mailing list. Maybe someone who is faster
>> > in than than me should try to get the driver working on his nokia770.
>> > (The packages mentioned in the announcement do not work on current
>> > maemo, because of the older EABI)
>>     
>
> If you are a vendor, trying to build hardware that you have to provide
> support for, then the last thing you want to do is to use a chipset with
> software that 
>
> 1) the software developers don't have hardware docs
> 2) the chipset manufacturer has no idea about your driver software and
>    will not give the device manufacturer any docs either
>
> It's a complete nightmare where nobody can help you and provide any kind
> of acceptable support level.  Thus, from a business standpoint, not
> bearable.
>
> Also, even if the free driver authors (prism54-softmac in this case)
> would really have reversed the chip up to the point there is barely
> nothing that they don't know about it,  I still would definitely like to
> prefer generating business to a chipset manufacturer who understands the
> Linux community and provides GPL'd drivers and/or documentation.
>
> Cheers,
>
> -- - Harald Welte <laforge at openmoko.org> http://openmoko.org/
> ============================================================================
> Software for the world's first truly open Free Software mobile phone