On Thu, Jan 19, 2006 at 04:05:26PM +0100, Blake Willis wrote:
> Greetings all,
re

> 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.
>
> My appeal is to those of you with more experience dealing with this
> sort of situation than myself. I think it's best to explain to them
> concretely and professionaly why an NDA on documentation is not in the
> project's interest, and why it is in their interest to support OpenBSD with
> documentation in the creation of a unified hardware-independant RAID
> management architecture. I think it's also worth mentioning (by name)
> their competitors that have already cooperated with the project.
>
> Anyone out there with 3Ware cards (or planning on purchasing them),
> I'd like to hear from you.
>
> I'm more than happy to put together a response to them myself, but
> I'd like your feedback first. Thanks very much for your assistance.

the best they can do apparently is to release a binary library and
docs for it's api under nda. this is completely unusable for anything
except reverse-engineering it.

cu
--
paranoic mickey (my employers have changed but, the name has remained)