How not to cultivate Linux love.

Last year I saw another inexpensive external USB modem, from “Wintec Industries,” and having fixed up the driver for another such thing before, I wrote to them suggesting that if they would like to send a sample, I’d be happy to be sure it worked with Linux as well (usually this is just trivial fixups to a generic driver).  Well, 543hrs 33min later (nice issue tracking system, at least!) I received the curt “resolution” of: Dont carry linux driver

If you’re looking for a Linux-compatible USB modem, I’d personally look somewhere other than Wintec.

If they wanted to say “sorry but we don’t have the budget to send samples, but here are the specs” or “this is the chipset, maybe you can tell us if it’ll work?” etc, I’d not be wielding the mighty power of my world-wide blog (hah!).  But this kind of curt dismissal bugs me.  Sure Linux may still be a small market for them, but when people offer to do free engineering/testing and the only requirement is a probably $15 part, or even an informative response (which is more or less free), a brush-off is not really called for.

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