sbergman27
March 25th, 2007, 04:22 PM
I've been thinking about how, so often, I and presumably others just take the disregard and abuse that we get from device manufacturers without effectively communicating our grief to them.
E.g., I have spent many an hour trying to get my Broadcom 4318 wifi chipset working stably, at 54mbit, with the native Linux driver.
But until yesterday, I had not communicated my displeasure to anyone at Broadcom.
So often, I think we feel, at some level, that it is our *fault* for using Linux instead of Windows. That a company does not claim to support Linux and so we have no right to complain.
But that is not so. Or, more to the point, there is a difference between complaints and constructive feedback. Companies pay big bucks for market research. So by emailing a rep of the company, you are actually doing them a favor by supplying constructive feedback for free.
I did send an email off to the Oklahoma Broadcom rep explaining the issues of Broadcom not providing proper specs from which stable drivers can be written, and failing to provide their own driver, while at the same time using Linux, for free, as a platform for some of their embedded products.
The short answer I got back made it clear that he hadn't a clue as to what I was talking about. I quote it in its entirety:
"""
The 4318 is a 802.11g chipset. I do not understand your complaint. Can
you not get WIFI access ? If not, please contcat the OEM you purchased
the product from.
"""
I've sent a note back trying to explain further. Perhaps he does not even know what Linux and Open Source are. But even if all I accomplish is making him understand that there are some computers out there somewhere that don't run Windows... well, its better then letting him go about his job without even that dim awareness.
So I call upon all of you, if you have a piece of hardware that has caused you grief, or even inconvenience, due to the ignorance or apathy of its manufacture toward us, type out a quick, polite email to their local rep today.
It's like the Doctor Seuss story "Horton Hears a Who". By ourselves we cannot effectively be heard. But together we can *make* ourselves heard.
We may be a minority. But if we all use the tools at our disposal effectively, we can make ourselves clearly heard over the din of their Windows customers.
This is one of the most important things that we can do to further Open Source software, and something that everyone can do, as it requires no special technical skills beyond knowing how to send an email.
Most companies have one or more email address listed on their 'contact us' page.
For others of you cursed with a Broadcom chipset who had trouble getting it to work stably, or are having to use ndiswrapper and the Windows driver (a configuration that will no longer work once the kernel goes to 4k stacks), here is the page listing Broadcom's area sales offices:
http://www.broadcom.com/contact/sales_offices.php
Sincerely,
Steve Bergman
E.g., I have spent many an hour trying to get my Broadcom 4318 wifi chipset working stably, at 54mbit, with the native Linux driver.
But until yesterday, I had not communicated my displeasure to anyone at Broadcom.
So often, I think we feel, at some level, that it is our *fault* for using Linux instead of Windows. That a company does not claim to support Linux and so we have no right to complain.
But that is not so. Or, more to the point, there is a difference between complaints and constructive feedback. Companies pay big bucks for market research. So by emailing a rep of the company, you are actually doing them a favor by supplying constructive feedback for free.
I did send an email off to the Oklahoma Broadcom rep explaining the issues of Broadcom not providing proper specs from which stable drivers can be written, and failing to provide their own driver, while at the same time using Linux, for free, as a platform for some of their embedded products.
The short answer I got back made it clear that he hadn't a clue as to what I was talking about. I quote it in its entirety:
"""
The 4318 is a 802.11g chipset. I do not understand your complaint. Can
you not get WIFI access ? If not, please contcat the OEM you purchased
the product from.
"""
I've sent a note back trying to explain further. Perhaps he does not even know what Linux and Open Source are. But even if all I accomplish is making him understand that there are some computers out there somewhere that don't run Windows... well, its better then letting him go about his job without even that dim awareness.
So I call upon all of you, if you have a piece of hardware that has caused you grief, or even inconvenience, due to the ignorance or apathy of its manufacture toward us, type out a quick, polite email to their local rep today.
It's like the Doctor Seuss story "Horton Hears a Who". By ourselves we cannot effectively be heard. But together we can *make* ourselves heard.
We may be a minority. But if we all use the tools at our disposal effectively, we can make ourselves clearly heard over the din of their Windows customers.
This is one of the most important things that we can do to further Open Source software, and something that everyone can do, as it requires no special technical skills beyond knowing how to send an email.
Most companies have one or more email address listed on their 'contact us' page.
For others of you cursed with a Broadcom chipset who had trouble getting it to work stably, or are having to use ndiswrapper and the Windows driver (a configuration that will no longer work once the kernel goes to 4k stacks), here is the page listing Broadcom's area sales offices:
http://www.broadcom.com/contact/sales_offices.php
Sincerely,
Steve Bergman