Toshiba laptops (starting with Tecra S1 provide a SMI bus interface through which certain parameters of the system can be set or retrieved. The parameters can can be display brightness, last Fn-xxx key that was pressed, aerial (bluetooth, wireless) status, etc.
Toshiba (as expected from a company who makes laptops for Windows) did not release a Linux driver, nor were these laptops already supported by the linux kernel. However, what Toshiba did that was out of the ordinary was provide full documentation to work with! The catch, as outlined on their site somewhere, is that you must develop GPLed Linux drivers. Fair enough, so I did!
This lists is by far not complete (I'd have to list everyone who worked on the Linux O/S :) all the way up to Linus), but if you feel like you really should be here, drop me an email and I'll add you.