On 2/19/19 7:21 PM, Celejar wrote:
On Tue, 19 Feb 2019 18:48:23 -0800 David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> wrote:AFAIK there are no commercial off the shelf (COTS) USB-SATA docks with FOSS hardware (device), firmware (device), or software (device or host). (If somebody knows of any examples, please post the URL's.)I'm still not sure what you're saying - there certainly are COTS devices fully supported by FOSS software. E.g., I have a Syba SY-ENC50091: https://www.sybausa.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=885 It works fine under Debian without needing any non-free stuff, as far as I recall.
The Syba USB-SATA dock works with Debian because the HDD manufacturer, Syba, the USB cable manufacturer, the computer manufacturer, and Debian have implemented everything needed for an end-to-end connection from the HDD firmware kernel to the Debian Linux kernel. Standards facilitated that result.
If you're objecting to the hardware not being FOSS, my understanding is that most useful hardware isn't. Is the SATA hardware itself FOSS?
I agree that, historically, hardware has often been closed-source. But, similar to software, there are open-source hardware projects:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware David