Pat Kane wrote: > Linda Fellingham wrote: > > I have asked those companies if we could explore open source > > for these drivers > > I understand why Sun can not open up the 3rd party graphics card > device drivers, but could Sun open up the Sun OpenWindows X server > code that dynamically loads DDX handler modules at run time? > Then, with a lot of work, we might teach the Xorg X server to load > the closed source binary device drivers.
Actually, we don't need to open source to ALL of the 3rd party SPARC video device drivers. Just ensure we have the latest closed source ones seem good at the moment (case in point: the Nvidia closed drivers on Solaris x86). A better solution is that we can at least redistribute the closed source drivers which seems possible with the available driver packages. ensure developers wantng to build a "Indiana on SPARC" distro can do so without licensing fees or issues. Otherwise, the only thing to open up "whatever" prevents ISV/IHVs from porting their video device drivers to SPARC hardware. So if a developer wants to port ANY open source video device driver to SPARC workstation hardware (i.e. Sun Ultra 25/45) - they can do so without question or pain from 'closed' bins or APIs. Case Study: OpenGL 2.1 support on Sun XVR-2500 Graphics Accelerator There are a lot of SPARC servers and workstations in existence - so rying ot open up ALL of those video device drivers and support/maintain them is an 'independent' business project all in itself. ;o) Ken Mays C'LeeAnn Concepts LLC This message posted from opensolaris.org
