Device Drivers as Entry Barriers

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

Subject: Re: device drivers
   Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998 14:47:48 -0700
   From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
     To: love@cptech.org, Multiple recipients of list AM-INFO
<am-info@essential.org>


At 03:29 PM 3/9/98 -0500, James Love wrote:
 
>Someone has pointed me toward this and other web pages,
>
>http://microsoft.com/hwdev/desinit/wdm.htm
>
>and suggested that MS is pushing for proprietary hardware interface
>standards for next generation hardware, making it more difficult for a
>competing OS to run on a Wintel machine.   Does anyone know much about
>this?  Is this a real problem?  Jamie

The conventions discussed on this particular page do not, by themselves,
make it difficult for other OSes to work with the hardware. The ONGOING
problem, however, is that development and maintenance of drivers for
Microsoft OSes takes so much time, effort, and support that most
hardware vendors do not believe that they have the resources to support
other platforms. This is one of the things that caused OS/2 to fade into
the background: you simply could not get OS/2 drivers for most hardware.

This is a problem that's tough to combat once an operating system 
achieves monopoly status. (The percentage of additional sales gained by
supporting other OSes will always be quite small.) This is one of the
many underlying facts which refutes Bill Gates' claims that Microsoft's
monopoly status might quickly disappear: the monpoly is, in fact,
self-reinforcing.

So far, the alternative operating systems which have the best hardware
support are -- ironically -- the freely redistributable ones, such as
the various free implementations of UNIX. In these cases, users
interested in the hardware donate their time to create the drivers, so
the hardware maker's investment is almost nil.

Users of these operating systems still run into problems, however, when
the hardware vendors refuse to reveal the information required to write
drivers for their products and also refuse to write them themselves. The
reasons range from fear of retaliation by Microsoft to fears (usually
unfounded) that keeping the software/hardware interface secret gives
them a competitive edge. But since (again) the benefits of having
support for competitive OSes are perceived to be quite small, even the
slightest rumbling from Microsoft can cause a hardware vendor to
withdraw support for driver development. The vendor has much more to
lose if its drivers are not included with Windows than if it does not
have support in, say, Linux.

Another problem for the developers of alternative operating systems -- 
especially ones for which source code is freely distributed -- is the
advent of cartels such as I20, which withhold necessary development
information about whole groups of hardware products from developers of
alternative operating systems. While I20, in particular, claims that it
is bound by patent licensing agreements, this claim does not ring true;
the techniques used by these intelligent peripherals are no different
than those used by others, and most of the patent claims in question
would probably be thrown out due to the presence of prior art.

The real challenge, in restoring a competitive environment, is to
provide real incentives for the support of competition and disincentives
for the perpetuation of monopoly. Many in the industry are pessimistic
about
the feasibility of any such approach, because it requires long-term
thinking rather than a focus on the short-term bottom line. They also
believe that, in the current business climate, Microsoft as a monopolist
can easily discourage all such efforts merely by rattling its saber.
What do you thihk?

--Brett Glass