Introduction

How come I can't use any of my Infrared devices properly with a otherwise really decent Operating System? (Linux fans may not visit this site often, however: I know to appreciate it's advantages  too!) The Palm Pilot still requires the cable-cradle and my cell phone can't communicate either. 

Why should I spend money on a driver of a particular company, which promises to resolve the issue - but whose last beta was anything but promising? It experienced these issues on a number of systems: system frozen, occasional blue screens and after a reboot a total refusal to start. Reports in the respective IrCOMM-Forum hinted that these issues exist also on selected systems while using the final product.

During an internship at Hannover's Höft & Wessel corporation I was allowed to gain a lot of knowledge and expertise with infrared communications. While working there I was confronted with the incomplete IR implementation in Windows 2000.

Motivated by the many needs of applications that use IR, I started thinking about writing this driver on my own. At least I would know where to look for solutions and the chances to find answers would be much higher than with a commercial solution.

System programming was nothing new to me, but driver development in Windows 2000 is. Preparing for the actual development work was a major part of the effort. But it looks like it was worthwhile, since the driver does for me what I expected it to do.

If this makes a few other people around the world happy too - even better. I was already called "insane" because I am not asking for any money for this driver. But in my opinion the responsibility to deliver a functioning product would be much greater then, it is not so significant for an Open-Source-Project. At the same time it would have been a major effort to setup effective testing. Who wants to spend money first, just to permanently be used as a beta-tester? Well, there are a couple of companies that have such customers. But they have an excellent marketing department too.

One of the delightful advantages of an Open-Source-Project is, that you are not necessarily depending on a single developer. Should I be prevented to continue development of IrCOMM2k, because of other commitments and the resulting lack of available time, any developer interested could step in. The source code may as well be used as a basis for developing own drivers, as long as they will be released while covered under the GNU General Public License.