On Friday 14 September 2001 21:08, you wrote:
> Frank Earl wrote:
> > How about all those people without the luxury of upgrading- say laptops
> > and things like iMacs? Go buy a whole new computer- not an option, when
> > you think about it. This is not to say you have to be doing it- but
> > someone ought to be doing something about it. I'm not into forced
> > upgrades just because some hardware vendor decided that something's too
> > old or a software vendor did the same- I suspect a lot of us aren't
> > either, Gareth.
>
> That's fine -- I wasn't suggesting that. But, for the people who can
> actually do this job, the r128/G400 isn't terribly interesting anymore.
> Isn't the whole open source thing about developers scratching an itch?
>
Absolutely.
I remember a set of drivers for a Mac parinter written by a chap in the
states so that you could use the mac only printer with a linux PC. Windows
did not support this printer and the only way to use it with a PC was through
linux and these drivers. The point is that if you've got people who can't
upgrade (or buy a new printer!) then they write the drivers (or debug/alter
the ones that are available) because thats the only option to get their
hardware working, but that can only happen in an Open environment.
If you close up the lot (specs, source, prog support) then when the vendor
ceases to support the drivers their bu**ered. Of course its ridiculous to
suppose that bleeding edge programmers should have to iron out the nitty
gritty of 18 month old drivers. However why not take a leaf out of ID's book,
go open source after 18 months and see how the community takes the drivers
and tweaks them to get the best out of them (and iron out the bugs): Surely a
learning experience for everyone, esp the vendor --- see where those bugs
came from! Perhaps you would'nt need to go open source with everything, I'm
not sure which bits you would want to keep closed but there is aways that
option.
Just my thoughts
Andy
> Talk with Keith and Brian, I'm sure they'd agree with me. We are graphics
> programmers for a reason, and keeping up to date with the latest research
> and rendering techniques is important as a result. I'd rather be making a
> difference to the state-of-the-art than tweaking a driver I wrote 18 months
> ago. But that's just me...
>
> -- Gareth
>
>
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