Ray Heasman wrote:
And there we start diverging. The problem is that things don't stand
still. There will always be a proprietary chipset with open source
drivers that beats what an OGP design could do.
Will there? Examples?
The user might pay more for "different" if they think "different" is in
some way cooler.
Freedom is cool.
If I want an OpenGL card, I will buy a nVidia or ATI card that is
reasonably well supported by an open source driver.
What happens when Radeon 9250's run into short supply?
I will buy a card that is currently cheap and has open source support
equivalent to that of the Radeon 9250, and it will probably be several
times faster. And I will be able to do so, because there are lots of
open source developers making it happen. An OGP-designed card provides
no special value for me there, beyond a mild wish to help out open
source projects. Most real world people don't have that wish.
But, those developers wasted their time re-writing support
for cards that darned well ought to be available. I would
prefer to see them spending it on something more useful,
like maybe porting SDL to the new PS3 Linux platform so
it will run PyGame games that I write.
I know that it doesn't exactly work like that, but time-wasted
because of some twits hiding their specs annoys me,
nevertheless. It's pointless make-work and wasteful.
OpenGL is more than we need. It's also less than what we need. Reality
has quietly gnawed at this list, and people are now talking about doing
most of the hard stuff off of the card, or doing something besides a
graphics card. Great, so why are we here again?
We're here because we have something we'd like to accomplish. Not
every thing is easy, but I have build a number of real and potential
business relationships around this project that, should they come to
fruition, will give us the boost we need.
Hm. My experience is that words are cheap. I might feel more
enthusiastic about OGP if I had more detail about those relationships,
but I have learned that such relationships aren't usually worth much
until after there is a contract and money on the table. They increase
your chance of success from 1% to about 3%.
A factor of three is pretty good; entrepreneurship is always
risky; and I think you're underestimating the odds when one
of the "business relationships" Timothy is talking about is
probably his current employer, who is apparently pretty
supportive of this project.
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
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