Wilko Bulte wrote:
On Sat, Jun 16, 2007 at 10:33:00AM +0100, Dieter wrote..
So who, exactly, is the best person to write to requesting
docs for AMD/ATI graphics/video chips?
We need to politely inform them that
There are a lot of operating systems out there,
and they all need high quality, fully functional drivers.
FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Plan-9, Open-Solaris, ...
We might want to add a ATI graphics/video card to a computer
with a different CPU architecture (Alpha, Sparc, PPC, ...)
Binary drivers are useless, because:
Too many OSes.
Too many CPU archs.
Can't fix bugs.
Can't fix security holes.
Therefore we need documentation on how to program the chips.
2D is not enough. We need video decoding and 3D.
If we can't have high quality, fully functional source code drivers
for the OS and CPU arch of our choice, then there is no reason to
buy the product.
Have I left out anything?
Well.. yes. "How much revenue ($$) AMD will loose when these open
source projects do not get the chip docs".
Ultimately the $$ question is what exec level management will ask.
Countering the above statements (the following are important
questions to answer, and should be done by their business types with
more hard data):
How much money will AMD lose on competitive edge versus market
segment share for the particular open source customer base?
How much of the ATI drivers will they have to modify in order to
ensure that they remain IP protected and the extremely proprietary
sections don't get put out in the open by accident?
-Garrett
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