I20 and Device Driver Barriers

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

Thanks to David S. for pointing out this story, which concerns problems
in developing device drives for free software platforms like Linux and
FreeBSD.

http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/5343.html

Wired News

Consortium Segregates the
Bus

by Michael Stutz 
3:07pm  21.Jul.97.PDT A coming
improvement to the PC architecture
promises to dramatically enhance
throughput for high-end servers, while at
the same time only granting a select few
the right to create software for it. Some
programmers say this is a move by
corporate giants like Microsoft to enforce
a prohibition on the growing free software
movement, and have begun to fight it. 

Intelligent Input/Output, or I20, is the
technical specification for the next breed
of high-end PC hardware devices
invented by Intel and developed by the I2O
SIG, an industry consortium. Conforming
hardware will help relieve I/O-intensive
enterprise applications, such as
client/server networking and
videoconferencing, by taking the I/O load
from the CPU, said consortium
spokesman Michael LoBue. "It 'tweaks'
the basic architecture by offloading I/O
processing from the CPU to a dedicated
I/O processor," he said. 

This built-in processor is part of an
intelligent I/O subsystem that would even
allow I2O devices to communicate with
each other - for example, a network card
could make a request directly to a disk
controller - without intervention by the CPU
or operating system. Eventually, OEMs
such as H-P and Dell may release
high-end systems conforming with I2O,
some before the calendar year's end. 

"We feel that the technology is promising,"
said Patrick Franklin, Microsoft's I2O SIG
rep, who confirmed that its NT 5 operating
system will begin to implement I2O
compatibility while noting that "there's the
risk that I2O performance will not justify the
cost." 

But another issue has begun to raise a
stink with programmers - the ability to
write and share software for I2O-enabled
hardware devices is controlled by the
Microsoft-dominated SIG. 

"It looks as if the I2O SIG agreements are
deliberately written to exclude free
software," said Bruce Perens, chairman of
Software in the Public Interest, a nonprofit
organization formed to support Debian
GNU/Linux, a free Linux operating system
package. "It's my opinion that this was a
very deliberate decision on the part of the
I2O consortium, and specifically on the
part of their sponsors Microsoft and
Novell." 

Free software - software whose source
code is shared throughout the Net
community - has taken a good portion of
the high-powered server market that I2O
targets, said Perens. "[For] Web servers,
file servers, and big-ticket systems,
people have dumped high-priced
commercial server packages in favor of
free software." 

Because software development for I2O
peripherals is forbidden for nonmembers,
the US$5,000 yearly membership dues
will put individuals and small organizations
out of the game. Members themselves are
not permitted to disclose their source
code, and Microsoft has veto power to
drop any organization from the SIG. This
makes a grim scenario for independent
programmers. 

The usual reason for keeping a hardware
system closed - to prevent cloning of the
device - does not apply in this case, as all
I2O hardware vendors have access to the
same documentation. "Five thousand
dollars is assurance that the little guys,
people like Linus Torvalds [the original
author of Linux] who might work for a
college or program at home on hardware
they purchased with their own money, will
be locked out," Perens said. 

But, says LoBue, "I try to tell these people
that one, this isn't a conspiracy and two,
the founders are not stupid, ignorant
people unaware of a free approach to
licensing - so grow up, get over it. Either
join or wait until such time as they feel that
it doesn't need to be licensed. Boy, they're
sure having a lot of fun on their soapbox
lecturing about how ruin and damnation
will happen because there are 'proprietary
specs.' I would claim that I2O is not a
proprietary spec - anybody is free to join
the SIG." 

Proprietary specs have surfaced many
times throughout PC history; the outcomes
have almost never been good. The
MicroChannel Architecture bus was IBM's
one-time attempt to keep the PC bus its
own. It didn't work. 

"MCA was doomed from the start," said
Microsoft's Franklin, citing the difficulties
in getting a license from the IBM
bureaucracy as a prime catalyst for its
demise. Similarly, it may prove tough to
impossible to keep determined hackers
from programming their own hardware:
Some have even now routed around the
I2O membership requirements, informing
Wired News that the secret document
describing I2O in its current revision was
openly available from the I2O SIG's own
site.