James Richard Tyrer wrote:
Intel claims that they provide complete documentation. VIA isn't that
Intel has certainly -not- provided full docs.
clear about releasing a data sheet. They seem to want an NDA which I
have no problem with since I have no interest in reverse engineering
their chips.
VIA does indeed provide GPU docs under NDA.
open source driver for Intel. The VIA driver is only for a frame buffer.
False. Trivial inspection shows a full, open source, 2D/3D accelerated
driver for VIA is available. Taking two seconds to do "ls
drivers/char/drm" in the kernel source tree would have shown you reality.
The Linux market isn't asking them for an investment. What we have been
asking for is the full documentation of the chips. Note that graphics
False. Full documentation is an investment that requires legal $$$,
plus opportunity cost, plus potential cost of your company's primary
product being supported at a sub-standard level.
chips are an anomaly here. All other chips I know of have full
documentation available.
Ok that is just laughable. There are so many counter-examples its not
even funny. Easy examples: Ethernet, SATA (areas I deal with every day
in the Linux kernel) and winmodems all have hardware vendors that refuse
to give out docs.
The law guarantees that they cannot go into the open source market in
a big way.
Explain this please!
I suspect that the problem is that they don't have a patent. They can
<blink> Um... ATI and NV have bunches of patents. Search the patent
database. Graphics is a patent minefield. Have you been reading this
thread at all?
copyright the drivers and copyright the chip, but that doesn't prevent
reverse engineering of the chip, or making a clean room clone.
Without a patent grant, you would be infringing if you distributed the
RE work product.
Jeff
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