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Writing a basic Linux device driver when you know nothing about Linux drivers

(crescentro.se)
367 points sbt567 | 1 comments | 22 Jun 25 10:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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ahartmetz ◴[25 Jun 25 20:09 UTC] No.44381377[source]▶
> I also thought I’d message the vendor and ask them if they could share any specifications or docs regarding their protocol. To my surprise, Nanoleaf tech support responded to me within 4 hours, with a full description of the protocol that’s used both by the Desk Dock as well as their RGB strips.

How cool is that? Too many vendors still think that they have valuable intellectual property in such relative trivialities. And that handing out the specs freely helps their competitors more than themselves.

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1. Teknoman117 ◴[25 Jun 25 23:15 UTC] No.44382679[source]▶
I almost had that experience with one of the popular PC liquid cooling hardware vendors around 10 years ago.

I emailed them saying I'd be interested in developing drivers for their hardware for Linux as I was a happy customer and was immediately put in touch with one of the managers and their engineering team.

Made quite a bit of progress before the whole thing was shut down because one of their component vendors threatened them saying it'd be a breach of their contract with them.

Apparently that vendor sold a "datacenter" (non consumer) version of that hardware for which they charged a hefty license fee for the management software (which was Linux compatible).

Jokes on them, someone reverse engineered the whole thing with a USB analyzer years later and published it XD. (not me)