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Why hardware and not software?Why hardware and not software?Posted Oct 19, 2006 8:39 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304)In reply to: Why hardware and not software? by jamienk Parent article: Free gadgets need free software
Because if you allow running alternative firmware (and especially if you publish specs: not hard as much of these devices are off-the-shelf parts) then people might *choose your device over competitors' because of that support*.
(In fact we already see this among the blind: a huge percentage of Rockbox's users are blind because no other player firmware has even halfway decent accessibility. I guess that blind users are too small a market segment to bother with, or something.)
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Why hardware and not software? Posted Oct 20, 2006 0:20 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] Because if you allow running alternative firmware (and especially if you publish specs: not hard as much of these devices are off-the-shelf parts) then people might *choose your device over competitors' because of that support*. But I think the point is this: It is even more obvious that if you allow recording off the air through your standard firmware, people might choose your device over a competitor's. And yet, Creative actively chooses not to. So won't whatever drives Creative to withhold recording function also drive Creative to withhold alternative firmware capability? This looks a lot like the wireless telephone issue (will the government allow a manufacturer to sell a telephone on which the user can replace the control program, if the user could put on a version that violates broadcast laws?)
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