On Sun, Jul 20, 2003 at 02:22:10AM -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote: > >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 > 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 > the imagination. Running a publically traded company on a > charity basis however is a good way to upset stockholders.
Another issue is if those drivers are in the least flaky, then you get very bad press for having dodgy drivers, so you're going to either have to dedicate heaps of resources, or none at all. I know what I'd be gunning for, if I had a BComm, or whatever. > 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. Nissan did make the V8 engine for the Holden VL Commodore, a typical Australian grunt car. :) > 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 > 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. Yep, and this goes quite deep: apparently they can't even release TV-Out specs, for fear of getting smacked down by Macrovision. > You're really asking Kentucky Fried Chicken, to give the recipe > for their 11 herbs and spices here, and the secret sauce. Pretty > soon, half of the KFC customers have no need to go to KFC as they > can make it at home. And McDonald's start selling Alabama Fried Chicken, so you can go to the one place for all your burger and chicken needs. Bzzzzzt. > By the way, I have a recipe for chicken that <legal jargon> > "tastes very similar to, but is not KFC". I wonder if someone > let the cat out of the bag at KFC one day, and this is the > Colonel's secret recipe? I've got this black syrupy stuff that tastes just like Coke, too! > 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. Aye. The problem with this view is that most people slam you for trying to kill open source or some crap, when you're being realistic. -- Daniel Stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.kde.org - http://www.debian.org - http://www.xwin.org "Configurability is always the best choice when it's pretty simple to implement" -- Havoc Pennington, gnome-list
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