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The i2o Bus: A Conspiracy Against Free Software?

``` [This is forwarded from permission from the debian-devel mailing list. As the RRE subscriber who forwarded it explained, "Bruce Perens is the project leader and chair of Software in the Public Interest, the nonprofit organization formed to support a commercial quality free distribution of Linux." See www.debian.org.]

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The i2o Bus: A Conspiracy Against Free Software?

Bruce Perens (bruce@pixar.com) Wed, 16 Jul 97 11:40 PDT

Check out http://www.i2osig.org/ "i2o" is a developing "non-proprietary" standard for high-performance computer peripherals. Unfortunately, it's a closed standard, it requires a NDA, and you need a license to develop software for it. Their terms are:

Membership is $5000/year. You can't develop software or hardware for it without being a member. You can't disclose source code for your drivers. You must stop making hardware or software for it if you lose membership. Members can vote out other members.

The backers of this are Microsoft, Novell, Hewlet-Packard, and NETFrame. It looks as if the i2o agreements are deliberately written to exclude free software.

I suspect that if i2o peripherals become popular, free operating systems will be locked out from running on PC hardware.

Please take a look at this and give me a reality check.

Thanks

Bruce Perens Debian Project Leader

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