At 04:05 PM 1/19/2006 +0100, Blake Willis wrote:
>Greetings all,
>
> Going through my local 3Ware distributor, I have requested API
> documentation for 3Ware's RAID cards. My distributor has responded that
> 3Ware may be willing to provide the API documentation, but I would need
> to sign an NDA first.
>
> Obviously this is contrary to OpenBSD's goals and said docs would
> be almost useless to us if their distribution was bound by NDA. At the
> same time I'm sure that if I respond to their NDA request with a straight
> "that's not acceptable" they will not hesitate to slam the door in my
> face, regardless of whether my foot is in it or not.

Blake,

We have many 3Ware cards in systems, .. but we have switched to LSI for a
number of reasons:

1) They cooperate;
2) Their cards work;
3) They participate in the market with a variety of models.

The 3Ware issue has been beaten to death in the past so we don't need to
waste bandwidth revisiting, but the bottom like is that the developers have
said (quite rightly), that non-open code is not deserving of the resources
required to implement.

Should you manage to GET non-NDA code/documentation the isssue might be
reconsdered, but I would not get your hopes up. 3Ware is a closed company -
one trick getting documentation, should you succeed, isn't going to change
that attitude.

Lee