When I realized that my new comp came with a winmodem, I was relieved to find that I still could make it work under linux, thanks to drivers available at linuxant's site. The driver worked really well, and I really appreciated the work the guys out there had put into it.
But now, it seems that linuxant is only interested in making big bucks by being the sole provider of linux drivers for conexant chipsets. As they themselves say, they cannot release the sources as they have signed NDAs, other licensing issues... I can understand that, but can they explain why they have now chosen to release their latest 'free' driver in the form of a crippled module that only supports 14.4kbps speeds, when their earlier beta supported 56k connects? Because nobody wants to run a 56k at that speed, so they're left with no choice but to purchase the driver from them. The extra features like fax and all are of only secondary concern to most users, what they want is just a modem they can connect to the net with.
I might even have paid for drivers, but 15$ is simply way too much! I think they can offset their development costs by charging far less than that, they're just aiming for a big profit here.
Well, I guess I'll wait for my broadband connection to arrive, so that I can finally junk my modem and upgrade to kernel 2.6 (on which the existing drivers won't compile
)
I hope the guys at linuxant will have more sense and listen to us.
