I think Frank's outline of future plans is a good start but let me toss in my 2 cents. Overall, I would like to see some focus shift from just developing drivers to ensuring the infrastructure remains solid and up to date. We can beg hardware manufacturers all we want to release specs but some of them have simply made the decision not to. It is important to revisit that issue from time to time but for those hardware manufacturers that will not release specs we should try and develop a solid, stable infrastructure that will at least encourage them to write their own DRI drivers. The development of the DRI architecture and most of its drivers were done by Precision Insight/VA Linux. Much of the architecting was done in a closed manner. By that I mean it was done by PI/VA employees and the discussions were predominantly done internally. The result is, I believe, a large amount of the DRI knowledge did not get dispersed to the community. Things like why something was done one way and not another, why something wasn't done, what still needs to be done, where can things be optimized, what short cuts were taken, etc. There exists some old DRI architecture documentation but it is out of date. I think it would be a useful exercise to try and tap into the brains of some of the DRI architects to update the documentation that exists and outline future enhancements that could/should be done. I know there has been some discussion, both internal at PI/VA and elsewhere, about developing multimedia/video DRI type infrastructure. It is probably a good idea to work with some of the Linux Video guys to try and better coordinate work between the two projects. In my opinion the ultimate goal should be to get Linux graphics/multimedia at a level comparible to other platforms. That means everything from infrastructure to documentation to drivers and setup utilities. We need to expand our focus beyond just (open source) drivers. Finally, Frank, when you are drafting up your letter to hardware vendors about "why open source driver development is good for you" remember that by now most of them have heard all the reasons for open source. Although you want to remind them of the reasons you want to take it to the next level. If you want them to release specs you need to convince them that the expertise exists in the open source community to make use of the specs and that they will get something in return for their troubles (i.e. a stable, working driver that won't reflect badly on their product). David _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp _______________________________________________ Dri-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dri-devel
