Re: ATI and NDA

[Knut J Bjuland]

Which radeon cards do ati provide specs for? i.e. R300

Alex Deucher wrote:

--- "Gerhard W. Gruber" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
 

On Wed, 3 Dec 2003 13:49:35 -0800 (PST), Alex Deucher
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
   

The NDA allows you to release the resulting source code from your
     

work,
   

you just cannot release the actual databooks themselves.  However
     

not
   

all NDAs are the same.  some might not let you release your code. 
     

read
   

them carefully.
     

That's what I was wondering about, because when I document the code
then there
should be all the information in there which I read from the specs.
But even
if I don't document or would have to remove them, you could still get
this
information from the source. Of course a source for a specific
problem doesn't
contain all the information covered in the book, but it is still
something.
   

I think you have to use your best judgement, like saying:
/* ENABLE_SOME_SUCH_BITS must be on to for screen blanking to work */
WRITEREG(SCREEN_BLANK_CONTROL_REG, ENABLE_SOME_SUCH_BITS);
Rather than:
/* SCREEN_BLANK_CONTROL_REG
* 0-3: ENABLE_SOME_SUCH_BITS - controls X for screen blanking
* 4-8: ENABLE_SOME_OTHER_BITS - controls Y for screen blanking
etc.
*/
The rest you don't really need to document if you can figure it out
based on the register and bit field mnemonics and the function name.
I'm not an expert or a lawyer so take this all with a grain of salt.

 

Currently I'm not that far with my project, so I don't need to go for
an NDA.
When I'm at that point maybe everything I need is already in the
XFree sources
so I may not need it anyway.
   

The r128 and radeon drivers are pretty easy to figure out without
databooks.  really the only reason you would need them is to add a new
feature that requires regs or bitfields not already "documented" in the
driver.
 

Do you know if nVidia offers similar conditions for developers?
   

They may offer an NDA, but not one that will allow you to release your
source.
Alex

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