Bug#234556: [Crusoe CMS bug] Getting a CMS 4.5 for your laptop...
On Wednesday 20 October 2004 17:51, you wrote:
> On Wed, 2004-10-20 at 15:04, Siward de Groot wrote:
> > Under dutch law it would be the responsibility of the seller
> > (the shop where you bought it) to sell good quality products,
> > and if they do not, then you can prosecute them to get your rights.
>
> The problem is that the seller will complain to Sony which will complain
> to Transmeta. It can take forever. I just took a short-cut.
You tried a shortcut (good idea) and sony didnt want to cooperate.
> I don't know who's legal responsibility this bug is...
You have a sales agreement with the seller,
therefore the seller must deliver a good laptop.
You do not have any claim on sony or transmeta
(the seller does have a claim on sony because he bought from them).
> > The seller can not reasonably be expected to provide firmware updates
> > if Transmeta doesnt create these,
> > he does however have the possibility to exchange the laptop with one
> > that does not have this brokenness (probably a more modern one).
> I'm not sure, I want another laptop...
If you demand the seller to correct the situation,
then it is no use to demand him to do something impossible,
and if transmeta doesnt release an update,
then this would be the only thing the seller could do.
> > This is dutch law ; however, it also seems reasonable,
> > so i would not be surprised if the country of purchase had similar
> > laws. Maybe debian-legal would be interested in this problem.
> This would be really interesting.
It cant hurt to ask them...
> Then, what I did wrong was to ask people to lie about it, as you say
> later. :-/
Not very wrong and not only your fault.
> > They are uncooperative, so it is not easy to get your right.
> > I think it would be smart to see how strong your legal position is.
> > If you can not get results through the judicial system
> > (whether by warning of possibility to sue or by actually sueing),
> > then it would be right to warn fellow transmeta fans to
> > not buy this transmeta/sony machine because it is buggy.
> Hum, I would prefer to not be that extreme... :-/
Wouldnt you have liked to be warned about this before you bought the laptop ?
> Actually, this advertising just brought me some feed-back from a guy in
> a company which is selling thin clients running with a dual boot Windows
> XP and Linux (see:
> http://www.teco-ia.com.tw/PDF/TR5670-XP-Quick%20spec.pdf).
I can't read that: gv? says:
GNU Ghostscript 6.53: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1
Anyway it's beside the point. A laptop must be able to run any program
(unless it's limitations were made clear before the sale).
> He does encounter the exact same problem with the X server.
> Maybe, this will force Transmeta to admit that there is a serious bug
> here and make them delivering a patch...
> I mean, how long can they try to pretend there is no bug ?
Who knows.
Maybe they are too busy.
Maybe they wait till free software people have exactly identified the bug for
them.
> In a matter of fact, the CMS 4.4 and 4.5 seems to be exempted of this
> bug (even if they don't know exactly where is the bug causing this crash
> of X). So, an update of the CMS should be enough to fix the bug.
4.4/4.5 could be complete rewrite of some horrible part of their code.
I think they dont want to unveil their CMS code ;
and iirc i read that some previous CMS update was reverse-egineerable.
Their code is worht a lot of money.
Perhaps they would be willing to upgrade it for you
if you sent the machine to them.
(after the bug is identified and squashed ofcourse).
> My guess is that paying somebody to make a working patch to update the
> CMS should be cheaper than offering to replace all the hardware to all
> the owners of hardware with CMS 4.3.x that request it.
They said that they couldnt reproduce the bug in their test setup
(they didnt say they couldnt reproduce with this sony machine,
sony probably doesnt give them such machines).
Finding the bug could be very time-consuming.
But i dont really know either.
Maybe you could send transmeta an email asking if they would be willing to
update the CMS if you sent them the laptop,
they wouldnt need to worry about reverse engineering then.
That would only work if your hardware can run that new CMS ofcourse.
I am sorry that i have no solution to your problem.
Getting your right is very bothersome if you can't easily show that
the bug is in the firmware.
Asking transmeta what they are willing to do could be an idea ;
You don't have a claim on them, but
they ofcourse want to have a good name,
they are probably so professional that they want to give good service
(so is sony, but sony cant do anything about it themselves),
and for transmeta it would be good to devise a safe way to give updates
for all future versions of CMS, as a bug will occur sooner or later,
so working on this problem might have usefull spin-off for them.
Probably it won't help,
but maybe they ask Linus to sort this problem out and ask sony to
do safe upgrades for them in sony's repaircentres :-).
have fun,
Siward de Groot
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