Hello, Thank you all on the list for your responses.. It has been interesting. Mr. Harris, yes I am one of "Those people" who want a device to work in my chosen operating system, and have been frustrated that while things have gotten a bit better than they were in 1998, the OS and users that use it are still considered second class by the device manufactureres despite some very quiet lip service on the manufacturers part. Part of my attitude is from being involved in (mostly on the sidelines) in the initial project that grew into Gatos, and the stonewalling that was done at that time. Since that time ATI has donated hardware, and provided some documentation for the area that I am most interested in. Multimedia in case you hadn't guessed :-) I still am not able to use the DVD playback acceleration features, because the chopped that out of the docs.
On Fri, 2003-07-18 at 04:57, Mike A. Harris wrote: > On 17 Jul 2003, William Suetholz wrote: > > > When are the various different patches out there for ATI cards going > >to be integrated into XFree86 and DRI? I know of at least two different > >projects that are modifying these drivers. > > I'm not sure what specific patches you're refering to, but > if you're refering to the DRI project and GATOS project, they're > not "patches". They are projects. The DRI code gets merged into > XFree86 2-3 times a year or more depending on various factors, > and happens as XFree86 development proceeds. In my paragraph above I did call them projects. I was not really thinking about DRI, however I was thinking of Gatos, and the TV-Out stuff. --SNIP-- > >What's the deal with ATI's drivers? > > The binary ones, or the open source ones? Either way, your > question isn't very clear. "What's the deal" doesn't mean a lot. > I am not aware of any open source drivers directly available from ATI. > > As for your statement "reinventing the wheel" and it's associated > implication about why ATI has produced proprietary drivers and > made them available for download, here is a clue for you. -NASTY- I'm not totally stupid. > --SNIP-- > however the drivers > are unsupported - just like any company's drivers are unsupported > on any OS platform. (Try calling any video hardware vendor on > the telephone for *any* operating system, including Microsoft > Windows and tell them your video card is crashing and you think > it is a driver bug. Watch how fast every vendor out there will > tell you that they do not provide end user support.) > Not entirely true.. I have gotten support from ATI in getting their stuff to work under NT and other MS systems. --SNIP-- > >After all their drivers don't support XV at all, so you can't > >use the multimedia capabilities of some of their integrated > >cards like the AIW-PRO and 8500DV. I realize that in the past > >they have provided some information to XFree86, and eventually > >after having their multimedia stuff reverse engineered to the > >group that was working on that. They have, however, never > >provided complete information! > > They've got the right to do that if they wish. Suffice it to say > that ATI has provided more documentation for their video hardware > than all other vendors combined, at least the docs that I have > had access to from all vendors. With people like you bitching > about it however, I don't see how that is intended to get anyone > to release any documentation or specifications that haven't been > released. They could theoretically release all documentation to > everything, open source their proprietary drivers, sell their > company and donate the money to the XFree86 project, and people > would still find something to bitch thanklessly about and > complain about some bug they find. > On the other hand.. If more people who didn't want to have to run another OS to access features that are not well supported because of lack of knowledge on how to support them would comment/complain (oh alright -BITCH-) maybe the hardware vendors would realize that there is a viable market for their devices to be used on the second class OS's And, I'm sure that ATI has a file on me :-) I've been commenting on this directly to them for some time. --SNIP-- > If I sound like the devil's advocate, I assure you I'm not. I'm > just tired of hearing random people bitch and beak off about this > type of crap who don't put any sort of thought whatsoever into > the business, legal, copyright/trademark/patent, or engineering > costs and other factors that affect these types of decisions in > companies out there. Try to look at things from the angle of the > given company out there for once. > Yes I am a random person, and, I'm a nobody who must be a pretty terrible person to want to use something other than a MS supported product to utilize the features that the card was purchased for. And, I must never (in the 5-7 years I've been asking for this) have thought about the business side of things. I would actually be satisfied with Binary only drivers that would support the whole card. But, there aren't enough people letting them know that there is an interest (OOPS that would be BITCHING!). > And really, the XFree86 project has absolutely zero control over > any of this, so why bitch about it here where NOBODY can remotely > do anything about it? > XFree86 has an interest in the drivers that have been forked into other projects. And, the group has a working relationship with the vendors in question, which means that such concerns can be expressed in places that will result in the best possible result. Rather than Random people (never call them customers) that use the vendors hardware can use the hardware in a manner befitting the quality of the hardware's design. As to why I haven't learned my lesson.. Well I had thought that things had gotten better. And they have, since the start of the Gatos project when folks at ATI said Linux what? At that time they said that there was no work being done to support things because there was no interest being expressed by customers. Well, I have to go see if I can get these boot marks off my back :-) Bill Suetholz <nobody> _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
