[Wirelessdriver-support] Re: 10.2.4 and the Linksys WPC54G hack

[Amanda W. <am...@al...>]

On Saturday, February 15, 2003, at 03:16  PM, Nick Sayer 
<ns...@qu...> wrote:
> Apple's 3.0.3 AppleAirPort2 driver attempts to disable "Linksys
> compatibility," but their attempt was rather easy to defeat.
>
> The big question is whether or not they'll try and call it a DMCA
> violation. Jerks.

Why?  I mean, it violates the MacOS X end user license agreement, 
reduces the incentive for third parties (either freeware or commercial) 
to support Macs with these cards, and probably makes Apple less likely 
to give out information in the future.

It'll certainly discourage anyone else from writing drivers to support 
these cards, so that when Apple changes the driver to have a 
less-trivial hardware check, you'll be up a creek without a driver.  
Imagine if you'd done this for AirPort.kext (which is not a lot harder 
to patch)...  Discouraging people from writing drivers doesn't seem to 
me to be what Mac users really need at the moment.


Amanda Walker
(disclaimer: I'm the author of the IOXperts driver, and think Rob's 
been doing a great job with the freeware one.)