Date: Thu, 02 Dec 1999 13:50:35 -0500
From: Eric Bentley <eric_bentley@email.com>
To: linmodems <discuss@linmodems.org>
Subject: Lucent drivers clarification notes

Some clarifications:

The lucent driver that I gave to Russell to post on www.linmodems.org, is
compiled with gcc, up, on Red Hat 6.1.
I am not aware of the memory issue (1gb/2gb) so whatever is the default is what
I used.  SMP is not considered necessary as lucent is not aware of any vendor
selling SMP systems with the lucent modem.  In fact the currently implementation
is not SMP safe.  (Is there an API to tell linux to only use a single CPU for
all entries into a driver?  This does exist and is used an another SMP OS - and
is the solution that Lucent has used)

Lucent's position was that they were going to provide the driver that was
requested by their vendors - and only supply it to those vendors.  That driver
is the one for RH6.1.  It was my idea that the larger Linux community would want
early access to this driver and that is why is it being made available.

At this point, begging, screaming, yelling, and polite emailing is not going to
help because as far as Lucent is concerned, their customers (remember, their
customers are the vendors not the linux end users) are only asking for the RH6.1
binary.

Now, that said, I believe I can show them that it would not be a support
nightmare to provide a version that includes pre compiled code and some source
that can be compiled on any kernel.   However, at this time, it is only my
suggestion and not Lucent's policy to do this.

Lastly, I am not a Lucent employee and do not speak for Lucent.  I am simply the
outside contractor that they used for this port.  Any thing above that seems to
indicate otherwise should be reread with this fact in mind.

I hope this has cleared up any confusion that has surrounded this issue.

-Eric