On Friday January 3 2003 12:32 pm, Ronald J. Hall wrote:
> Just as soon as ATI's new open driver stuff is close enough to
> Nvidia to be useable, I'll be more than happy (and relieved) to
> pull out the 'ole credit card and buy 3 cards to replace the
> Nvidia's here...
>
> <moment of wistful thinking here> mayperhaps Nvidia will see Linux
> users switching to ATI because of the open source situation and
> *finally* release the code to their drivers! :-)
>
> I know, I know...still, we can hope!
Altho the PR cop out most hardware vendors give is that they can't
release source and still protect their intellectual property, that's
disingenuos at best. The main reason is their existing licensing
aggreements, NDA's, and contracts, particularly with Micro$oft,
prohibit it.
ATI uses the excuse, as does nVidia, it's complete B$. They both
out source their chip production to the same Taiwanese foundry. So
there's some people in Taiwan that have the hardware plans and specs
for both. The Linux ATI situation is practically as bad as the nVidia
one. By the time they get working open source drivers out for their
newest cards, the cards are obsolete.
I think we'd all be better off putting our hopes in the XFree
people. As it is now, they've got GLX and openGL hardware
acceleration implemented in their open source driver for nVidia cards
thanks to help from SGI and the Mesa Project (XF-4.3). Just need to
get direct rendering going. Maybe they've already got that figured
out too, but are afraid of patent infringments ? Last thing they
need to do is give M$ a shot at crippling them with lawsuits.
--
Tom Brinkman Corpus Christi, Texas
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Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
