On Sun, Jul 20, 2003 at 02:22:10AM -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote: > On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Sven Luther wrote: > > >> driver models differ greatly. The kernel code would be custom > >> code written for the given operating systems involved, and almost > >> certainly written for high end high paying customers in the > >> scientific and other high end 3D customers in the marketplace. > > > >Maybe they could have the whole X driver and kernel module in open > >source, and only keep the opengl library as proprietary stuff. I more or > >less doubt they have any IP involved in these part, at least some really > >meaningfull stuff. This would it make much easier for user installations > >too, i think. > > Your guess is wrong. The kernel part contains the part that is > probably one of their most prized pieces of IP. I wont get into > details about that however as I don't know if discussing it would > violate my NDA with ATI or not. I do know however, that if there
Well, i guess the other GPU manufacturer do it almost the same way, and also think it is higly secret stuff. > is one part of the drivers that would be the most unlikely to be > open sourced, it is the binary kernel blob. It does significant Which is the one place were the GPLed code place special restriction on using proprietary hardware, depending on who you ask naturally. > things that require extremely detailed in depth knowledge of the > chip way beyond anything anyone involved in OSS Radeon driver > development outside of ATI is likely to have docs or knowledge > on. I realize I can't "prove" this in any legal way for the > non-believers without possibly violating NDA, so believe what you > will. No, it is ok, i believe you. > I'd love to see it open sourced with complete details, but > realistically it isn't going to happen from _any_ vendor IMHO. Then they have to take the consequences, and provide proprietary drivers for all the architectures their hardware is probable to run on, which means that ati and nvidia should at least provide powerpc binaries, since powerpc is the most used arch after x86, and all of the apple ones are coming with nvidia or ati chips. The older ati based one where ok, since we had the r200 drivers, but not the nvidia ones, nor the newer radeon ones. I was going to buy a new powerbook, but there will probably never be open source 3D drivers for them, which means ATI or Nvidia have to provide them. Sure it cost them some, but this is the prize of doing closed source drivers. And if their drivers are of good quality, it should cost them no more than a rebuild on said arches, since both of them have mac OS X drivers anyway. > No vendor has provided that level of documentation to open source > vendors before. We get microcode to upload to the chips, and > that gives us something at least. Something better than nothing > IMHO, and I hope we continue to get this in the future too. I understand. > >> Why do these companies not open source their complete drivers? > >> Because they have intellectual property in their drivers that > > > >As if their concurent where not capable of reverse engineering the > >drivers. > > Reverse engineering that level of code with no detailed knowledge > of the specific hardware underneath is an exercise in futility. > I challenge anyone to reverse engineer how any mainstream GPU > microcode engine works and produce any useful information on it > to be used by OSS developers to write a compiler to create new > microcode on the fly in the driver. If I see that within the Sure, it is futile for anyone, but the graphic chip industry has higly capable people with indepth knowledge of how graphic hardware does work. At least they should get as much information out of it than what you find in standard chip documentation. > next 20 years for even the oldest of Radeon hardware, I'll fall > off my chair in total shock. Not to mention that doing so is > probably even illegal in many countries, and would prevent any > knowledge gained from being used. Then there's the issue of Well, it is not illegal everywhere, and even the PC industry did that with the first IBM clones, so i guess even in the US it should be possible. That said, i don't think it is more legal to sell me hardware and then don't give me the necessary means to make use of it. It would be like selling cars without wheels. > anything reverse engineered possibly being patented also, making > it useless in OSS (in countries the patents are covered by). > > In short: Mindboggling amount of effort, for little to no gain, Compared to just run a powerpc build, and maybe for some other arch who also has agp support ? But then they have others, less savory reason for not doing that. > and in 10 years if anyone makes any actual useful progress, they > may find themselves faced with a legal "go away now" notice from > the particular IP owner in question. > > It would be interesting however to see someone reverse engineer > several hundred Kb of kernel code with no hardware knowledge of > the GPU internals. I'd be amused to just watch someone start > such a project. ;o) > > > >> By these companies contributing to open source drivers however > >> (ATI contributes heavily to the radeon driver, and Nvidia to the > >> "nv" driver), they are still contributing to the open source > >> community, and they are providing users with an alternative to > >> use that is outside of any legally binding agreements that code > >> might contain in their own full proprietary drivers. > > > >I have no problem for them to go proprietary, but i would very much like > >a powerpc version of said drivers. Since both of them also release > >drivers for MacOSX, i guess this would not be very expensive to just > >rebuild powerpc versions of them. Or for other arches too. I think this > >is the cost the graphic companies have to pay for not releasing the > >source code. > > Perhaps if said companies business and marketing departments > determine that producing PPC drivers will be in the best > interests of their stockholders, they might decide to book Yes, that is exactly the philosophy which i don't agree like. Customers are only sheep that you can shave and which should shut up and do as they are told. > engineering resources to produce PPC drivers. The lack of such > drivers would indicate to me that there is not enough revenue > predicted to be generated by allocating such resources that such > drivers are more cost to develop than any financial gains > received by doing so. I'm no financial analyst by any stretch of To do a new build run ? Come one, what does it cost, one powermac they already have for doing the Mac OS X drivers, unless apple does them, and a few hours of work. It is risible that open source projects like X and debian are able to get the ressources to build on dozen of architectures, and nvidia and ati, with their billions of dollar of revenue cannot. > the imagination. Running a publically traded company on a > charity basis however is a good way to upset stockholders. Yes, and screw the customer. > There is a huge difference in "what would be nice if" and "is > considered economically viable by company $foo's financial > department". I agree with you for sure on the "would be nice if" > part. But I understand the financial realities that a smart > publically traded companies must use to shape their decision > making processes too. Sure, sure, but i think what i don't accept, is that the cost of doing such would be all that big, unless the driver are not endian clean, and of dubious quality. > >> >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 > > > >I am not sure this is the case all over the world, and in any > >case it is hardly fair. If i buy a product, i also buy the right > >to use it fully. I am no lawyer, but i guess that if you where > >going to resort to legal action, the judge may well see it that > >way in at least some of the countries where graphic cards are > >used. > > And if that company's product does not state that it is supported > on the hardware that you have chosen to use it with, then you are > purchasing it with the pre-knowledge that your chosen hardware > combination is unsupported and may or may not work at all, and > that if it does not work, it's not like you were in the dark > ahead of time. Sure, and everyone should run microsoft windows and be happy ever therefor, until they get bleeded to death that is. I would have expected a bit more from you. Also what choice do i have ? I am stopped from having good 3D graphic because i choose to use an open source OS on a non x86 cpu. That is discrimination, and may even cause monopoly problems, if the US justice was not sold out that is. > Try putting the engine of a Japanese car into an American made > car. Then complain to Nissan that it doesn't work, and see how > far you get. But what if your Japanese car would only work on japanese roads, and it still got sold to you in the US, and moreover, it would be the only car available ? I guess you would complain a lot, and not start changing all your roads to Japanese compatible ones. > >> 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. > > > >No, there you are exagerating. I hardly doubt that they would go broke > >or whatever if they released open source drivers. If anything, they > >would sell more boards. > > If anything they'd likely get sued by 3rd party vendors whom > they've licensed code and/or patented technology from, which they > do not have the right to give away to the public. That includes Sure, sure, but there are solution around this. And they can replace it with their own technology in their next release cycle, or negotiate something which is workable. All the rest is only poor will and cheap excuses. > both software, and hardware interfaces as well. Only the > particular hardware vendor in question knows what IP they have in > their hardware and drivers, and what they can do with that IP > legally. Sure. > I don't expect any of these hardware vendors to speak up and say > "we have 15 patents in this piece of code which our ours, and > we've licensed 20 other pieces of technology from other companies > which we do not have the right to distribute source code or > technical knowledge openly to the community". More likely than > not, they realize that doing so would just incite a never ending > bitchfest between people who don't know or care about legal > issues and that such a bitchfest would generate more hostility > than just remaining silent and letting people who have no idea > just bitch amonst themselves blind to legalities of IP law. > > > >> We get what the lawyers say we can have basically, and we should > >> be glad to get that, especially if the alternative is nothing. > > > >The problem is that we get what the US lawyer say we can, and not what > >we may very well have the right to in other places of the world. > > You very well may. However a company not wanting to give their > own intellectual property to the public for free, and also then > let all of their competitors jump on it and use it to compete > with them, is not going to want to do that worldwide. They may > have copyrights, patents, etc. on it in some countries which have > copyright/patent laws, and in other countries there might be no > such laws. By holding on to their intellectual property they > keep it out of the hands of competitors, out of the hands of > bootleggers who would use the stuff and spread it around > illegally regardless of laws wherever, and they keep what is > theirs theirs. And enforce their monopoly, and these of the companies they work with, screw the customers. > Again, I'd love nothing more than to have the complete specs of > every video card ever made, and complete technical knowledge and > source code for them all, right from every vendor, published all > on one single website for everyone to use for whatever purpose, > and without having to know or care about copyright, patent and > other IP laws in any country. We all would like to see that, and > it would benefit OSS a lot. > > Hardware vendor's priorities aren't necessarily focussed on > benefiting OSS as number one priority and giving away their But they have no problem in riding the OSS popularity wave, benefiting from it, and they get free advertizement each time someone asks about graphic cards, and i tell them to avoid nvidia ones, but buy ati instead. As of lately i am not feeling very good by doing so though. > intellectual property for free. I would love them if they did > it, as yes, it would allow OSS to thrive more. It would allow > more platforms to thrive as well. It's just not very realistic > to expect that a company is going to jeopardize itself > financially or legally by open sourcing every piece of hardware > related code or specs they have. How funny. I seriously doubt that ati or nvidia would get broke if they released open source hardware, not even if they released properly built drivers for a bit more than just the one mainstream market. > >Not to count the free development time that goes into making the > >drivers work, or the amount of time one uses to answer about > >misguided proprietary nvidia drivers who have problems. They > >will not ask nvidia, but ask on the debian user list for > >example. > > Nvidia's binary drivers are chock full of intellectual property > as well. Some owned by Nvidia, and I'm guessing some owned by > SGI, and probably many other companies. You'd have to get a > large number of publically traded companies in the food chain to > agree to open source everything if you wanted to see this happen, > and you'd have to convince the company in _their_ eyes that their > stock prices would skyrocket for doing so, with zero risk of > having their asses sued off. <lot of ok stuff snipped> > Who knows. The chances of reverse engineering the kernel > microcode engine from one of these drivers however is even much > more likely than reverse engineering the KFC recipe by analyzing > the molecular structure of the crispy crust. Ok, i have no problem with that, so they should just build drivers for more than just x86. And especially people like you may have a higher chance of being heard by them than a random developer, but then redhat also dropped most of its alternate architectures if not all of them. Friendly, Sven Luther _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
