31–40 of 124 posts
I suppose a simple URL would be OK though!
Using copyright tools to try to contain published documentation of facts about anything is roughly where, if possible, I boycott anything involved with that company to the maximum reasonable extent. It is clear that TI no longer has an interest in developing new products, or figuring out better ways of making existing products, and would instead like to rent-seek and make the world a smaller place.
That was clear when Nokia fell and took down TI's OMAP processors with them and they just gave up to Quallcomm's Snapdragon without even putting up a fight. TI is now just rentseeking on their ananlog dominance and whatever sinking boat Intel is, TI is way worse.
I don’t think “rentseeking on their analog dominance” is a fair characterization.
This archive is distributing out of date documentation without making it clear that it’s out of date. This could cause a major problem for someone that uses it.
The documentation for the same chip is perfectly available on TIs website, although to get older datasheets you’ll need to dig further (by design).
There’s a ton of sites mirroring datasheets, and they weren’t DMCA. It looks like someone at TIs legal got creative about how control this sites to update their info.
Using copyright tools to try to contain published documentation of facts about anything is roughly where, if possible, I boycott anything involved with that company to the maximum reasonable extent. It is clear that TI no longer has an interest in developing new products, or figuring out better ways of making existing products, and would instead like to rent-seek and make the world a smaller place.
That was clear when Nokia fell and took down TI's OMAP processors with them and they just gave up to Quallcomm's Snapdragon without even putting up a fight. TI is now just rentseeking on their ananlog dominance and whatever sinking boat Intel is, TI is way worse.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this may be some bigger market fixing situation - only big and already established corporations would get documentation preventing any competition to emerge.
They could easily control it by selling chips to big players only if they want.
Using copyright tools to try to contain published documentation of facts about anything is roughly where, if possible, I boycott anything involved with that company to the maximum reasonable extent. It is clear that TI no longer has an interest in developing new products, or figuring out better ways of making existing products, and would instead like to rent-seek and make the world a smaller place.
That was clear when Nokia fell and took down TI's OMAP processors with them and they just gave up to Quallcomm's Snapdragon without even putting up a fight. TI is now just rentseeking on their ananlog dominance and whatever sinking boat Intel is, TI is way worse.
Burr Brown opamps and DSPs are enough to keep the legacy of TI alive. OMAPs are just DSPs with processor cores. They were not designed to be fast first.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could it be a legacy culture thing? If you’ve ever dealt with traditional broadcast vendors it’s the same thing there, impossible to get even basic documentation and manuals without having an authorized account in most cases. Really is frustrating when you try to shop around for a new setup and all you can get is marketing material.
Most likely. The open source movement in software was still relatively recently and quite radical. The hardware companies are still stuck way in the past.
If only. In the past it was common to provide schematics of your hardware in order that people could repair it. This was common for consumer products, industrial, instrumentation, test gear, almost everything. For example, the manual for the Amiga 500 had the schematics in it.
I don’t understand why chipmakers seem to always restrict access to documentation on chips. Their competitors will get it anyway. This only creates more problems for small developers.
The legal departments within companies have very, very different measures of success than that of just about anyone else. If you have weak company leadership, legal will start to drive policy more than it should.