On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 3:30 PM, Jensen Lee <hayd...@haydude.org> wrote: >> Jensen Lee wrote: >> > Certainly I want to keep using my Sun Blade. Will >> Sun next commercial release of Solaris at least >> support the legacy 3D Labs cards? > >> Because like every other computer company in the >> world, including Sun for >> the past 25 years, hardware is not supported forever >> and at some point you >> must choose between hardware upgrade or software >> upgrade? Those cards > > Let me understand Alan, why in 25 years of computing I never had this problem > before. Windoze supports old hardware, Linux supports very old hardware. > Now I chose a very expensive platform, let say the Rolls Royce of > workstations, 10 years on they decide to stop selling leaded fuel, only green > one. Do you think Rolls Royce would tell me my expensive car would no longer > run because the fuel standard has changed or would they make it run with the > new fuel? I have a 1998 Pentium II laptop that runs the latest versions of > both WinXP and Linux! > > Thanks God I am European and in Europe software patents are illegal, and for > a very good reason, they hamper progress and integration to the detriment of > the consumer. > > Now, on the constructive side, I understand the financial problems Sun is > going through right now, but there is a large user base who owns workstations > with 3D labs based FBs that sooner or later will want to upgrade to > OpenSolaris. If Sun keeps supporting their hardware they will remain Sun's > customers and may pay for support licenses, a memory upgrade etc. But if you > brick their workstations, chances are they will switch to a different > hardware supplier as in the Intel/AMD market there is open competition. > > What about the following options: > > 1) open the 3D Labs drivers in Europe where software patents even if existing > are not enforceable, someone in Europe could pick up the work > 2) include a binary package of both drivers (already available I believe) and > Xsun, installable on OpenSolaris Sparc.
3) obtain the chips documentation from 3D Labs and give that to the community. Like Sun already did for his own chips. It can be understood that 3D Labs don't want to provide documentation for advanced 3D features. But not publishing the basics to use the chip is utterly outrageous. > -- > This message posted from opensolaris.org > _______________________________________________ > opensolaris-discuss mailing list > opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org > -- Mattieu Baptiste "/earth is 102% full ... please delete anyone you can." _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
