Melchior FRANZ writes: > ... which doesn't buy them anything, if MS owns important patents and > wants to push DirectX and hurt other OSes. And don't tell me that they > wouldn't! Neiter Nvidia nor SGI is in control then, and certainly not > the "owner" of a Nvidia card. > I am not paranoid and I don't think that my scenario will become reality > soon, if at all. I just wanted to explain why it =does= make sense to > prefer open solutions over closed ones. As long as you don't get the specs > you are not really owner of your graphics cards. You depend on the > good will of your 'master'. Nvidia decides what you can do with the > product that you paid for. It's like if your only rented it. No problem > for Windows users, of course. They are used to it and don't deserve better. > But there's a better world out there. :->
I think the only thing that would change nVidia's approach right now would be if ATI (or someother 3d card vender) started kicking nVidia's butts and if open-source opengl drivers were perceived to be a contributing factor. Otherwise I think nvidia will be quite happy to continue doing things how they are doing them now. Certainly I agree that open source solutions are preferable to closed source solutions, and it is good to lobby and pressure companies for open-source. But at the same time, a company has a right to make money, and has a right to decide the best way to do that (within the limits set by law.) And since the product nvidia is putting out is pretty much the best quality, most stable, fastest thing available, and 'reasonably' priced for consumer PC's, it's hard to be too critical of them. But if nvidia ends up being a monopoly, they will have less motivation to maintain quality, stability, performance, and reasonable prices, and for all the reasons mentioned in previous messages, it is still good to be cautious about closed solutions and push towards more openness in the future. Curt. -- Curtis Olson Intelligent Vehicles Lab FlightGear Project Twin Cities [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minnesota http://www.menet.umn.edu/~curt http://www.flightgear.org _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
