DS
>The trend today among hardware manufacturers is to cut costs
>by moving tasks formerly done in hardware to host software.
>More powerful host processors are making this possible. For
>example, you could build a modem that consists of a line
>interface and a D/A and A/D converter pair. Modulation and
>demodulation, ie. the hard part in building a modem, would be
>implemented in host software. Compared to the case where a
>modem is implemented using a signal processor executing code
>from mask ROM, why should the modem maker not be worried about
>giving away something valuable to the competition by
>publishing the source code?
>
>Another example are passive ISDN boards, which typically
>consist of two Siemens chips plus an address decoder. The hard
>part in providing a ready-to-go ISDN solution is no the
>production of the ISDN boards, but the host software doing all
>the signaling and data transfer according to various
>protocols. There are several manufacturers producing almost
>identical ISDN boards. Don't tell me it wouldn't be an
>advantage to competing ISDN board makers if a manufacturer
>would make his driver software available in source form for
>the competitors to look at and borrow parts of.
>
>--
>Johan Myreen
>jem@iki.fi
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