Texas Instruments sent a DMCA takedown to a site archiving data sheets

> This only creates more problems for small developers.

This is exactly why: to stop small developers from buying them. There are three types of components in the electronics world to my observation.

1. Components for the general public (e.g. opamps, microcontrollers, power supply controllers) - the datasheets are publicly available. This is probably 70% of the marketplace.

2. Components for the OEM - Some components are only meant to be sold to OEMs in huge quantity. For example, a company may sell $1 LCD controllers, if such a company is only interested in selling to huge manufacturers for big money, they often classify their datasheets as "confidential" - it's a joke, the only purpose is stop small developers from wasting their time. Whether it's a Type-2 part heavily depends on the company. For example, a big U.S. semiconductor company may sell it to the general public, but a cheap Taiwanese vendor often classifies all the information as confidential.

3. Security through obscurity. If the chip contains unique or advanced technology, for example, the latest generation of NAND flash or SoC, the datasheet is classified to make it more difficult for other people to do market research. Similarly, the payment card and consumer DRM vendors essentially own the security chip industry, selling channels of the chip and availability of the datasheets are tightly controlled.

Type-2 and Type-3 are responsible for the most frustrating experience. If you are an independent kernel hacker who wants to port Linux to a new gadget, not being able to get the datasheet of the $1 LCD controller because it's "confidential" is a real headache.

But as I mentioned previously, Type-2 chips are not really secret - the confidentiality is only meant to stop small developers from bothering them. Thus, the chips themselves can usually be found for sale on the Shenzhen electronics marketplace, and it's often possible to find numerous leaked datasheets on the web. You can also reverse engineer consumer gadgets as a reference design. For example, Realtek Ethernet controllers, 100% of the public datasheets are leaked by insiders. If it's not, sometimes getting the datasheet may be possible you do some social engineering, "we are prototyping a new product based on the LCD controller chip, now our problem is register xxh..."

On the other hand, if it's Type-3, don't even think about it.

The vast majority of products by TI are Type-I: Usually all technical documentation is provided on the website, with schematics, PCB layouts, and reference designs (unless it's a specialized chip for a particular application). I recently used a TI chip in my design just because of the availability of documentation.

> Here is TI DMCAing a bunch of random datasheets. Completely jellybean stuff like 555s, 74xx logic, and op-amps. Nope nope nope nope. This is crazy.

These chips don't even belong to the Type-2 category. It's unreasonable to send DMCA takedown notices in terms of security-through-obscurity. The only explanation I can see is TI's overzealous corporate policies.

> The only positive effect that the NDA may have for a producer is that it might prevent the already existing customers to redesign their products, because they might not bother to obtain similar NDA from other vendors.

That's a positive from their competitors requiring an NDA, not for they requiring one.

Anyway, large software sellers benefit a lot from stupid procedures from their clients that create a huge cost to start buying from a new supplier (like passing all suppliers through legal or having a management vote for them). If all hardware manufacturers require NDAs, they can force their buyers into creating similar procedures, closing the market for new entrants.

An excellent point.

Alternatively, some customer pays an absurd amount of money to add Function X to the chip, and pays a premium to be the only customer who can use Function X.

This is an exceptionally crisp explanation.

TI is great to work with on Type 1 chips. They're nowhere near the worst in the Type 3 category. (Looking at you, Qualcomm and Marvell.)

I totally agree that the DMCA notices issued don't make much sense, given this context. I just get irritated by OSHW folks acting like their business means something to TI. They are ants crying in the footprints of elephants.

TI is about 10 years ahead of Intel, but rest assured we will be commenting on threads about Intel doing things like this in 10 years or less