On 18 Jul 2003, William Suetholz wrote: >> 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.
That is because ATI contributes their open source code directly to the XFree86 project. There is no separate open source ATI driver project, it is _part_ of XFree86 to start with. Just look at the XFree86 changelogs for any credits mentioning (ATI), (Hui Yu), (Alexander Stohr), or other ATI employees. Usually the credits are logged as "ATI" or Hui. The patches that are submitted are non-trivial, and without them the open source ATI Radeon driver wouldn't support half of the hardware it does, nor a lot of the functionality. >> 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. I'll consider that an exception to the rule. The majority of people I know who have ever called any video hardware vendor for anything have been told "we do not provide end user technical support for our products, sorry" or something to that effect. If your call was of a business nature, or you are a higher end customer, then I would be less surprised though. ;o) >> 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. People need to do that to their computer manufacturer really. The major computer manufacturers such as Dell, HP, Gateway, IBM and others. Until *they* start supporting Linux on the home desktop, I very much don't think anything will change. Once they do however, then the IHV's listed above and others will be the ones wanting Linux support, and the volume of sales involved justifies a bottom line to the video hardware vendor to do the work. It has to be commoditized first however in order for it to be considered any kind of priority. IMHO anyway. >> 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. There is a big difference between wanting something and realizing the realities of why a vendor wont provide it to you. *I* want support equal or greater to that which you would like to see. I would love to see it more than anything, with a VERY strong preference to open source. I'm not _personally_ interested in proprietary drivers, but I know others out there aren't biased one way or another and just want something that in their minds "works". But I know it wont happen until there is a visible and measureable money stream on some financial chart on a suit's desk that shows that supporting Linux affects the corporate bottom line for $COMPANY. I can understand and relate to that, despite wanting to see as much Linux support as possible. >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!). Perhaps the problem is that people are writing directly to the video hardware vendor, and perhaps the majority are doing so with angry emails and phone calls or somesuch. Really though, until Dell/HP/IBM/Gateway/whoever start saying "video vendor foo, we require video drivers for Linux as we will be supporting the Linux OS and we will use another vendor's video hardware who is willing to provide support if you will not". At that point, the sheer volume of sales that are involved are likely to make it viable, and the debate is over. Until that happens, I really can't see anything happening other than what we're lucky to get now, be it open or closed source (but preferably open). >> 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. I can't officially speak for the silent XFree86 developers of whom you might be speaking about, however I would bet money that the majority if not all of them understand the whole issue and don't want to get involved with another pointless debate about it as they've been watching the same discussions likely for 5, 8, 10 years or more, and know the ropes very well. They also do have relationships with the hardware vendors, and they know the hardware vendor's position very well. There is no point of them arguing with the hardware vendor as any amount of begging or demanding is not going to mean jack squat to any hardware vendor. A hardware vendor is very unlikely to budge unless they see numbers dancing on a spreadsheet with dollar signs in front of them. That might suck for _us_, but that is really the truth of the matter. >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. The open source community tends to measure "interest" in thousands or tens of thousands perhaps at best. I would very strongly assume that a hardware vendor saying "there is no interest" really means to say "the amount of interest that has been expressed to us to support that platform thus far, has not even moved the needle on our care-o-meter. Come back when you have 100000 times the number of paying customers interested, and when the major IHV's demand support because their customers demand it from them". Of course it would not sound very nice for a company to say that, and so it gets filtered via public-relations-speak into something ilke "we have not received sufficient interest from our customers to support that platform". If someone really wants to convince vendors to do anything, don't call them, call Dell/HP/IBM or whoever your computer system vendor is, and demand that they support Linux or you will not purchase their products. Demand that the system have supported video drivers also, and tell them which video hardware vendor is your preference. When the masses of people out there can convince one or more of the major computer IHV's to officially support Linux, this whole debate will start to become moot. Until then, don't count on much changing though. That might not taste good to swallow, but it is an honest reality... at least of course IMHO. I could be wrong though, perhaps tomorrow, we'll see a major announcement from all top video vendors on slashdot announcing they've released their source code because the number of Linux systems has skyrocketed over night from 0.000001% of sales to 50%. <grin> -- Mike A. Harris _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
