John Clark wrote:
> Unfortunately, relative to i386 designs, NetBSD from my perspective
> does have certain 'lacks' relative to ease of install, update, and
> get the local hardware userful, that other approximately 'free'
> software packages have already.

Oh yeah. This is recognized, just nobody stepped up to actually
write more fancier and user-friendly sysinst (I know I know, sysinst
_is_ quite cool even now, but it's my understanding other OSes
have installer even better).
Hopefully the system packages support (packages for stuff part
of 'base' binaries) would partially improve this. And it would
not be too hard to improve sysinst to provide a frontend for
installing the 3rd party packages (i.e. pkgsrc ones).
 
> need to do. Hence, if NDA are the requirement to support hardware 
> quickly, then that's what needs to be done, as long as the eventual source
> result is open to the NetBSD community.

Indeed.

It's quite silly for vendors to make barriers in writing drivers
for their hw. However, it's inevitable fact of life, and we need
to live with that. I don't see any problem in signing a NDA as long
as the result driver can be opensource. Vendors are generally quite
welcoming once the necessary papers are in place.  Behaviour similar
to the Intel networking legal department is quite an exception.

Jaromir
-- 
Jaromir Dolecek <jdolecek@NetBSD.org> http://www.NetBSD.org/Ports/i386/ps2.html
-=- We should be mindful of the potential goal, but as the tantric    -=-
-=- Buddhist masters say, ``You may notice during meditation that you -=-
-=- sometimes levitate or glow.   Do not let this distract you.''     -=-