Gareth Hughes wrote:
> I think people need to take a step back and have a think about how much
> money it costs to support top-class developers like those work/have worked
> on the DRI. We're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Unless
> the IHVs (or other companies) want to support it, I seriously doubt the
> open-source 3D graphics world will progress much further. Is the G400/r128
> class of hardware relevant anymore? That's the last generation to see
> anything approaching full support by open-source drivers.
So do we give up on open source drivers completely? I'm willing to bet
that there is some way to generate sufficient revenue to fund the DRI. I
don't know what it is, but it would be worth throwing some ideas around
rather than throwing our hands up and saying "oh, well."
It would be extremely unfortunate if we have to rely upon in-house
developers writing binary-only drivers for Linux. With a company like
NVIDIA, it really isn't that big of a deal, as they have excellent
drivers under both Windows and Linux. But ATI and Matrox both have poor
Windows drivers. I have to assume that any Linux drivers from these
companies would be even worse.
Is open source absolutely essential? Personally, I would rather have
binary-only drivers written by the likes of Brian, Gareth, Keith, et.
al. than binary-only drivers written by some faceless unknown.
Would an open/closed hybrid be feasible? A bare-bones, rasterization
only base implementation could be completely open source, included in
distributions, etc. A fully-featured driver w/ interesting extensions,
T&L, etc. would be a binary-only, licensed product. Something similar to
the way OSS works.
I know nothing about Xi Graphic's revenue streams, but they seem to be
making enough money to stay in business and develop drivers.
What other options are there? Is there a way to make this work? It's
worth a bit of brainstorming and thought about whether some model can be
put in place to support 3D driver development.
3D is becoming increasingly important for general PC use. In the past,
the domain of 3D has been primarily for DCC and games. In the future
(and not that far in the future), 3D will be pervasive throughout the
GUI. Without good 3D support, Linux is dead.
-Mark
------------------------------------------------------------
Mark B. Allan NASA Ames Research Center
QSS Group, Inc. Neuro-Engineering Lab
650 - 604 - 0537 (office) Mail Stop 269-2
650 - 604 - 0461 (lab) Moffett Field, CA 94035
650 - 604 - 3594 (fax) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://ic.arc.nasa.gov/ic/ne.html
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