Invisible wrote:
> On 27/10/2010 05:12 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> Invisible wrote:
>>> writing a few dozen lines of assembly to
>>> function as a device driver would be pretty trivial...
>>
>> And you would be right, were we living in a universe where people
>> building hardware spent *their* money so you could spend less of *your*
>> money.
> 
> I'm not sure I follow...
> 
> By not using exorbitantly-priced MS products, they can sell their device 
> significantly more cheaply. You would think that would be a fairly 
> compelling market advantage.

No. The guys making the coin changer, etc, having to support *both* Windows 
and Linux costs more than supporting just Windows. I imagine if someone came 
to them and said "We'll buy 50,000 of these if you provide a Linux driver" 
then they would have done so.  But those 2 dozen lines of assembly, along 
with all the other stuff that goes with it (like maintenance, sales, 
marketing, tech documentation, recompiling it for each kernel as necessary, 
etc etc) costs money and apparently wasn't worth doing.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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