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> reverse-engineered the protocol and open-sourced ... free work oof, I know that feeling - that sadness that comes with the realization that the manufacturer
by sennight 5y ago
> reverse-engineered the protocol and open-sourced ... free work
oof, I know that feeling - that sadness that comes with the realization that the manufacturer could have saved you so much trouble but chose not to... which you then rewarded with free labor and promotion. I got it every time I disassembled binary blobs in order to get hardware to work with anything beyond Windows. For a long time there wasn't much of an alternative, but that isn't really the case anymore. Setting up a new openpower system was a very strange experience, reverse-engineering wasn't even an option - the manufacturer provided schematics for the board and a wiki directing you to the source code for every bit of firmware (including the ring -3 processor).
- wpietri 5y agoMy sympathies! It sounds like you got much deeper than I did. I don't regret trying it once. It's possible, after all, that the manufacturer would have said, "Look, there's demand for an open protocol, just like some engineers have been saying. Let's take on that work ourselves." And honestly, they could have gotten away with some very modest support of the project: occasional discussions with engineers and enough free hardware that we could test new builds. But no shits were given on their part, so I also don't regret shutting the project down. I'm glad to hear things are getting better in some spaces. Let's hope it keeps going that way!