Martin Spott writes:
> Melchior FRANZ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > * Martin Spott -- Sunday 21 December 2003 00:07:
> >> I tend to include OpenSource drivers only, no proprietary stuff. 
> 
> > I understand, but then the whole effort is pretty useless. There are
> > too many nVidia card users, and no open source 3D drivers for them.
> 
> As you already said:
> 
> "[...] The problems with licenses of different proprietary graphic
> cards aren't such a great motivation."
> 
> I second that. Why shouldn't people use cards with OpenSource drivers
> for a presentation of an OpenSource flight simulator ?
> FlightGear developers are _that_ much careful when it's about including
> other people's work. Why shouldn't they take the same care for their
> graphics card drivers ?

The problem is that the best quality, highest performance cards are
either made by nvidia and ATI with binary only drivers.  The
open-source drivers have flaws and are lower quality.  I don't mean
that as a criticism, it's just that the in-house nvidia/ati developers
have a huge advantage over the open-source developers in terms of
access to card info and assistance with problems.  These binary only
drivers are given away for free; I personally don't have a problem
with using them.  People have to work and feed their families too.
Open-source is great, and I'm proud to be part of one of the larger
open source projects out there.  But personally, I don't mind if
FlightGear runs on top of proprietary operating systems or drivers
such as Mac OS, sgi, windows, solaris, or a binary nvidia driver on
linux.  There needs to be a balance between idealism and pragmatism.

Regards,

Curt.
-- 
Curtis Olson   HumanFIRST Program               FlightGear Project
Twin Cities    curt 'at' me.umn.edu             curt 'at' flightgear.org
Minnesota      http://www.flightgear.org/~curt  http://www.flightgear.org

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