--- "Mike A. Harris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Fri, 28 Feb 2003, Jon Smirl wrote: > > I don't see 100 unpaid hackers hacking feverishly on > anything X
Obviously you wouldn't see 100 people working full time but you might get detailed bug reports or patches from 100 people. I know I get patches from all over the place for code I have written. A couple of months ago I wanted to make a few changes to the ATI Rage128 framebuffer driver. It took me a month to get ATI to give me the register specs. I still can't get the 3D spec and this is for five year old hardware. I fixed a couple of bugs in the framebuffer. I just left the others alone since I can't get them to tell me how to reset the card from protected mode. I just don't understand what is to be gained by keeping the Rage128 hardware programming spec secret. After all a device driver for a board has the best copy protection in the world. But in ATI's defense they are much better than Nvidia. I gave away my NVidia hardware and I won't be buying any more. > While I would love nothing more than to see that, I > highly doubt > that either ATI or Nvidia have the legal rights to > open source > the entire source code of all of their drivers. > Parts of them > perhaps, but I doubt all of them, and even then > parts of them > would be patent encumbered still. We don't know if NVidia or ATI have incorporated 3rd party code into their drviers. There are other solutions. 1) ATI could simply open source their hardware spec and let us write the drivers 2) ATI could shift resources and contribute to the DRI code base instead of working on their own. 3) ATI can license their patents for royalty free use when developing drivers for their hardware. Other uses would require fees, like the new W3C patent position. Again, no knock on ATI. They are doing the best of the bunch. ===== Jon Smirl [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more http://taxes.yahoo.com/ ------------------------------------------------------- This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek Welcome to geek heaven. http://thinkgeek.com/sf _______________________________________________ Dri-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dri-devel
