> No we were discussing the video drivers!

Oops, I haven't heard the video chip being referred to as chip*set* so
far.

> this is where it gets difficult for me, are you also saying that an
> author of a book should not get royalties of be able to have copyright
> protection?  where is the difference?

The author sells a book. Oops, it's open source, and it doesn't hinder
the sales. nvidia sells hardware, but to be able to use the hardware,
it needs a tiny bit of software. There's no IP in that software. In any
case, both author and nvidia keep copyright protection. Hey man, have
you stolen^H^H^H^Hcopied that latest piece of nvidia software driver
yet? It makes the card you don't have go twice as fast. Yeah right.

> people train to become
> programmers, and some become good at it. they write software. why
> shouldn't they sell it if they want to?

Fine. Some people train to be hardware engineers. They make hardware.
Why shouldn't they sell their hardware? Fine. If they decide to keep a
by itself utterly useless piece of software under close guard, turning
their whole product into a pain, that's their decision. I feel free to
call that product a few names then. Remember how Matrox wasn't having
anything with source drivers, until they got bashed into releasing it?

Volker

-- 
Volker Kuhlmann                 is possibly list0570 with the domain in header
http://volker.dnsalias.net/             Please do not CC list postings to me.

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