"It seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the result is that Linux works great without having to do the work" said Bill Gates in 1999 (pdf). While we don't know if he actually managed to do just that (creating problems to other OSes to work well with ACPI), but if he did, it is a good explanation why ACPI has been flaky on the majority of x86 computers with anything else other than Windows (the older, APM standard, seemed more compatible with alternative OSes).
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Member since:2006-06-09
And? Public specifications are public. AFAIK, Microsoft didn't participated in the basic but major TCP/IP specifications, but benefit from it like everyone.
If they didn't want the ACPI specs to be public, they should have convince firmware and hardware partners to keep it closed. I dunno if they tried, but if they tried, they failed.
Public specifications are public specifications are public specifications. Don't blame the public for reading them, follow them, using them. Make your specifications private for that.
Member since:2005-07-08
The guys who code ACPI for Linux are Intel guys (Intel actually has quite a few people working only for Linux-related things, it's very nice)
And Intel have participated into the ACPI development, probably even more than MS. So it's not that Linux hasn't done "anything".
Member since:
2006-05-10
Maybe thinking and writing all the ACPI specifications ? It was co-developed by Microsoft.
So Linux can use the specification, but no Linux developers have participated to the writing of the specs.
Perhaps I am wrong, but it is how the statement can be read.