How's this draft? I think the last paragraph is a bit weak. Is it the RENDER extension we're able to accelerate? Or is it named something else? And what are the other neat thing we'll be able to do with it that are poorly supported on other cards?
I am the founder and head of the Open Graphics Project. We've made it our goal to develop new graphics hardware that is fully open architecture for the purpose of having fully open source drivers that fully support all features of the hardware. One of your list members pointed me to the discussion you have been having on a related topic and suggested that I put in a statement. I used to be a LKML member, but I had to leave once the OGML traffic got too high, so if you want to contact me, you'll have to email me directly. Having been faced with Linux hardware-support challenges many times myself, I've certainly thought of circumstances where allowing binary drivers would be a good short-term solution, but I believe condoning that is a slippery slope that will lead to the corruption of the Free Software ideal. I'm not the kind of purist that believes all proprietary software is evil, but Linux is great in large part because it's open source (and stays that way because it's free software). I thought about mentioning stable ABI's, but it's been discussed to death, and most people seem to realize it's a bad idea. The moment we give old-school hardware vendors that opening is the moment we lose a lot of ground in our progress towards ubiquitous free software. It is this open source requirement for Linux that has spawned so much innovation and sharing of ideas and is the only reason why you can use so many x86-specific peripherals on a PowerPC platforms. As for other graphics vendors like ATI and nVidia, I honestly don't fault them for their business models. To them, it's far more profitable to sell to Windows users, and Linux users are in such small number by comparison that it likely costs them more to support us than they make from selling us cards. Even if I'm wrong, businesses can hurt themselves by stretching themselves too thin and trying to make too many disparate groups happy. So why don't ATI and nVidia just release specs so we can write drivers for them? Because their drivers are a huge part of their competitive advantage. As a hardware designer, I always strive to strike the best balance between software and hardware. Hardware costs a lot of money, so when you can do something in software instead without it being a burden on the system, that's what you should do. For ATI and nVidia, exposing their interfaces would expose too much about the internal workings of their designs, thereby giving away too much information to each other and other competitors. It is the capitalist thing to do to compete in whatever way makes the most sense, and those secrets are all they have to compete with each other. For Traversal Technology, the Open Graphics Project is an interesting risk. To some extent, we can afford to do this, because we are small and have integrated ourselves into the community to a huge degree. We stand as a niche player, and based on that, we create a reasonable business model. What will sell our products is the fact that they are open architecture. Although the near-term business goals of ATI and nVidial make sense, the future goes beyond just open source. It isn't enough to just release source to your drivers. Other developers need to be able to understand them and add support for features in your hardware that you didn't. And they need to be able to use your hardware in ways that you didn't anticipate. (I think that part's the most fun!) Although I don't expect hardware vendors in the future to release the internals of their hardware, as Traversal intends to do, I do believe we'll reach a point where every piece of hardware we use has published specs with sufficient detail that we can write good drivers for them. That's the direction we need to be headed. Let's not delay that inevitable outcome by giving hardware vendors an excuse to slide back into the old ways of doing things. Someone pointed out to me that there was a subthread on LKML pertaining to OGP's ability to compete with ATI and nVidia. It has never been our goal to compete with them on performance or features. Yes, we're designing a 3D engine, but it's not fast, and it doesn't have a programmable fragment shader. We're not targeting gamers. It's designed for desktop and workstation users and to accelerate the RENDER extension, among other things. We are not going to compete with them on 3D grounds because we do not have the manpower or money to do it. Instead, we are carving out a niche in the graphics market for users who demand open specifications, OSS drivers with full support for all features available, and a number of other things like dual-screen and TV-out. _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
