Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
David Dawes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >When exactly have I 'ranted' against XFree86 and some of it's volunteers? > > I felt personally attacked beyond what might be considered > reasonable by you in some of the forum "discussions" in April this > year. Because I stated my opinion that everyone involved in XFree86 has some kind of vested interest? > I'm a volunteer leader of an open source project, not a public > official. Oh, and I never did get an apology for the inaccurate > assumptions you publicly presented as fact. If you are talking about your relationship with Tungsten Graphics and contract development done on behalf of Intel, my "inaccurate assumptions" were never presented to be inaccurate. If fact they were mostly just relaying stuff publicly presented on several web sites. ie: you publicly state on your web page you are working on Intel driver code, you worked for Tungsten, Tungsten does contract work for Intel, and Intel tells me that they contract Tungsten specifically because the leader of XFree86 work theres. Where is the inaccurate assumption? > My personal life seem to take up an inordinate amount of your attention > for some reason. Thanks mate. Honestly I don't give two hoots about your personal life, just what you do as the leader of XFree86. What I do care about is if someone is using their power as the leader of XFree86 for commercial gain while trying to hide that fact from the community. If you are doing commercial development because you need to get paid and put food on the table, that's fine, just don't try to hide the fact. Be open about what you do and let the community decide whether they they feel that is acceptable behaviour from the leader or not. For instance do you really think it is acceptable or 'fair to the community' for your new company X-Oz to be selling proprietry versions of XFree86? Don't you think that is an abuse of your power as the leader of XFree86 (something over which you have pretty tight control)? Oh wait, I forgot. XFree86 is run by the board of directors and are not accountable to what the community thinks nor has to disclose anything. My bad. Regards, --- Kendall Bennett Chief Executive Officer SciTech Software, Inc. Phone: (530) 894 8400 http://www.scitechsoft.com ~ SciTech SNAP - The future of device driver technology! ~ ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
--- Kendall Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> a écrit : > David Dawes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Frankly, your own rants against XFree86 and some > of its volunteers > > recently are no different than this. It sure left > a bad taste in > > our mouths. There is a sickening propensity > towards hostile and > > intimidating behaviour from several quarters, and > it deserves the > > negative results it will surely achieve. > > I have still yet to receive an email from you either > backing up your > claims that I have been ranting against XFree86 and > some it's volunteers > recently. Either back it up or offer me an apology. > Guys could you please finish this in private e-mails? Bye Manu ___ Do You Yahoo!? -- Une adresse @yahoo.fr gratuite et en français ! Yahoo! Mail : http://fr.mail.yahoo.com ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Thu, Jul 24, 2003 at 11:15:25AM -0700, Kendall Bennett wrote: >David Dawes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> Frankly, your own rants against XFree86 and some of its volunteers >> recently are no different than this. It sure left a bad taste in our >> mouths. There is a sickening propensity towards hostile and intimidating >> behaviour from several quarters, and it deserves the negative results it >> will surely achieve. > >Excuse me!? My own rants against XFree86 and some of its volunteers?? > >When exactly have I 'ranted' against XFree86 and some of it's volunteers? I felt personally attacked beyond what might be considered reasonable by you in some of the forum "discussions" in April this year. I'm a volunteer leader of an open source project, not a public official. Oh, and I never did get an apology for the inaccurate assumptions you publicly presented as fact. My personal life seem to take up an inordinate amount of your attention for some reason. Thanks mate. David -- David Dawes Founder/committer/developer The XFree86 Project www.XFree86.org/~dawes ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
David Dawes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Frankly, your own rants against XFree86 and some of its volunteers > recently are no different than this. It sure left a bad taste in > our mouths. There is a sickening propensity towards hostile and > intimidating behaviour from several quarters, and it deserves the > negative results it will surely achieve. I have still yet to receive an email from you either backing up your claims that I have been ranting against XFree86 and some it's volunteers recently. Either back it up or offer me an apology. This kind of behaviour is simply not acceptable from the 'impartial' leader of XFree86. BTW, congrats on your new company X-Oz (http://www.x-oz.com/). I wish you luck developing proprietry versions of XFree86 including your 'greatly improved version of the XFree86 loader'. Thank you, --- Kendall Bennett Chief Executive Officer SciTech Software, Inc. Phone: (530) 894 8400 http://www.scitechsoft.com ~ SciTech SNAP - The future of device driver technology! ~ ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
David Dawes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Frankly, your own rants against XFree86 and some of its volunteers > recently are no different than this. It sure left a bad taste in our > mouths. There is a sickening propensity towards hostile and intimidating > behaviour from several quarters, and it deserves the negative results it > will surely achieve. Excuse me!? My own rants against XFree86 and some of its volunteers?? When exactly have I 'ranted' against XFree86 and some of it's volunteers? Thank you, --- Kendall Bennett Chief Executive Officer SciTech Software, Inc. Phone: (530) 894 8400 http://www.scitechsoft.com ~ SciTech SNAP - The future of device driver technology! ~ ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Wed, Jul 23, 2003 at 04:42:31PM -0700, Kendall Bennett wrote: >Jon Leech <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> I'll back that up. Besides which, after a few years of being bitched >> at (and in one case involving a friend who's a senior software engineer at >> a commodity graphics vendor, physically threatened) because their company >> wasn't doing enough for Linux/OSS, I know a number of folks in industry >> who have moved well away from their initial pro-Linux/OSS position. It >> would be foolish to think that the personal views of important individuals >> inside a company do not have an effect on that company's official >> policies. >> >> It definitely DOES NOT WORK to harangue, Slashdot, or otherwise >> abuse the people responsible for the product you care about. At best you >> and others like you will be tuned out in the future. At worst you will be >> responsible for creating hostility towards you and your needs. There is no >> upside to this behavior. > >I agree with that 100%. We actually would have had a release version of >our Linux product at least three years ago, except for the massive amount >of negative feedback we received during our initial public beta cycle on >slashdot etc. Most of the complaints were along the lines of "it ain't >free", "where's the source" etc. It left such a bad taste in our mouths >that when the original intern working on the project went home, we >basically canned the product and only recently got back to working on it >again. Thankfully the Linux community seems much more receptive to our >products now (but then again we haven't announced anything on slashdot in >years ;-). Frankly, your own rants against XFree86 and some of its volunteers recently are no different than this. It sure left a bad taste in our mouths. There is a sickening propensity towards hostile and intimidating behaviour from several quarters, and it deserves the negative results it will surely achieve. David -- David Dawes Founder/committer/developer The XFree86 Project www.XFree86.org/~dawes ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Sun, Jul 20, 2003 at 05:12:00AM -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote: > On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, Daniel Stone wrote: > >Not very many, and their competitirs would then have access to all their IP, so > >could out-do them in the next generation of cards. > > I doubt that it would involve hardware as much as it would > involve the driver aspect and the JIT compiler for the GPU > perhaps. Having never seen the complete source code of any > modern proprietary full featured video driver however, it's very > hard to say. Well, not all, but AIUI it's becoming less of a pure hardware situation, and more of intelligent software being required, and sort of "showing your hand", so to speak. Then again, I'm *way* out of my depth here, so I'm likely to be way off the mark. I think Mark would probably be the most qualified to speak about this. ;) -- Daniel Stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.kde.org - http://www.debian.org - http://www.xwin.org "Configurability is always the best choice when it's pretty simple to implement" -- Havoc Pennington, gnome-list pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Sun, Jul 20, 2003 at 02:22:10AM -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote: > >I have no problem for them to go proprietary, but i would very much like > >a powerpc version of said drivers. Since both of them also release > >drivers for MacOSX, i guess this would not be very expensive to just > >rebuild powerpc versions of them. Or for other arches too. I think this > >is the cost the graphic companies have to pay for not releasing the > >source code. > > Perhaps if said companies business and marketing departments > determine that producing PPC drivers will be in the best > interests of their stockholders, they might decide to book > engineering resources to produce PPC drivers. The lack of such > drivers would indicate to me that there is not enough revenue > predicted to be generated by allocating such resources that such > drivers are more cost to develop than any financial gains > received by doing so. I'm no financial analyst by any stretch of > the imagination. Running a publically traded company on a > charity basis however is a good way to upset stockholders. Another issue is if those drivers are in the least flaky, then you get very bad press for having dodgy drivers, so you're going to either have to dedicate heaps of resources, or none at all. I know what I'd be gunning for, if I had a BComm, or whatever. > Try putting the engine of a Japanese car into an American made > car. Then complain to Nissan that it doesn't work, and see how > far you get. Nissan did make the V8 engine for the Holden VL Commodore, a typical Australian grunt car. :) > If anything they'd likely get sued by 3rd party vendors whom > they've licensed code and/or patented technology from, which they > do not have the right to give away to the public. That includes > both software, and hardware interfaces as well. Only the > particular hardware vendor in question knows what IP they have in > their hardware and drivers, and what they can do with that IP > legally. Yep, and this goes quite deep: apparently they can't even release TV-Out specs, for fear of getting smacked down by Macrovision. > You're really asking Kentucky Fried Chicken, to give the recipe > for their 11 herbs and spices here, and the secret sauce. Pretty > soon, half of the KFC customers have no need to go to KFC as they > can make it at home. And McDonald's start selling Alabama Fried Chicken, so you can go to the one place for all your burger and chicken needs. Bzt. > By the way, I have a recipe for chicken that > "tastes very similar to, but is not KFC". I wonder if someone > let the cat out of the bag at KFC one day, and this is the > Colonel's secret recipe? I've got this black syrupy stuff that tastes just like Coke, too! > Who knows. The chances of reverse engineering the kernel > microcode engine from one of these drivers however is even much > more likely than reverse engineering the KFC recipe by analyzing > the molecular structure of the crispy crust. Aye. The problem with this view is that most people slam you for trying to kill open source or some crap, when you're being realistic. -- Daniel Stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.kde.org - http://www.debian.org - http://www.xwin.org "Configurability is always the best choice when it's pretty simple to implement" -- Havoc Pennington, gnome-list pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
Jon Leech <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'll back that up. Besides which, after a few years of being bitched > at (and in one case involving a friend who's a senior software engineer at > a commodity graphics vendor, physically threatened) because their company > wasn't doing enough for Linux/OSS, I know a number of folks in industry > who have moved well away from their initial pro-Linux/OSS position. It > would be foolish to think that the personal views of important individuals > inside a company do not have an effect on that company's official > policies. > > It definitely DOES NOT WORK to harangue, Slashdot, or otherwise > abuse the people responsible for the product you care about. At best you > and others like you will be tuned out in the future. At worst you will be > responsible for creating hostility towards you and your needs. There is no > upside to this behavior. I agree with that 100%. We actually would have had a release version of our Linux product at least three years ago, except for the massive amount of negative feedback we received during our initial public beta cycle on slashdot etc. Most of the complaints were along the lines of "it ain't free", "where's the source" etc. It left such a bad taste in our mouths that when the original intern working on the project went home, we basically canned the product and only recently got back to working on it again. Thankfully the Linux community seems much more receptive to our products now (but then again we haven't announced anything on slashdot in years ;-). Regards, --- Kendall Bennett Chief Executive Officer SciTech Software, Inc. Phone: (530) 894 8400 http://www.scitechsoft.com ~ SciTech SNAP - The future of device driver technology! ~ ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Sun, Jul 20, 2003 at 03:10:14AM -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote: ... > Anyone in my position who has to deal with these types of support > questions or customer/user feedback, will very likely know > exactly where I am coming from, and will strongly back up my > statement that it is often better to just shut the hell up and > not say anything to a customer/user about something than it is to > be honest and then upset them even more, possibly getting them to > spread their negativity around and generate more bad publicity or > angst toward your company. I'll back that up. Besides which, after a few years of being bitched at (and in one case involving a friend who's a senior software engineer at a commodity graphics vendor, physically threatened) because their company wasn't doing enough for Linux/OSS, I know a number of folks in industry who have moved well away from their initial pro-Linux/OSS position. It would be foolish to think that the personal views of important individuals inside a company do not have an effect on that company's official policies. It definitely DOES NOT WORK to harangue, Slashdot, or otherwise abuse the people responsible for the product you care about. At best you and others like you will be tuned out in the future. At worst you will be responsible for creating hostility towards you and your needs. There is no upside to this behavior. Jon __@/ ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Tue, Jul 22, 2003 at 06:56:58PM -0700, Mark Vojkovich wrote: | The interest, at least as far as the press is concerned, seems to | be almost totally in the chipset performance. nForce2 is available | without internal graphics. If I recall correctly, nForce3 (I believe | there were some reviews out today) has no internal graphics. I'll take a look. |I do not expect graphics hardware to become a commodity. As Joel Spolsky mentioned, Microsoft tries hard to make such things happen. :-) | It is something that graphics hardware vendors fight hard against, Understandably. | and commoditization has not been the trend. In the PC, workstation, and simulator spaces there are fewer graphics hardware vendors today, and their products are more compatible, than at any time in the past five to ten years. I agree that graphics hardware hasn't been completely commoditized, but it sure looks like the trend is strong in that direction. I'd expect the same trend to carry through to embedded devices (as the PC folks leverage their technologies in the new markets). I'd also argue that programmable GPUs with a common programming interface increase the tendency toward commoditization. The business model for graphics apps running on various vendors' GPUs begins to look a lot like that of ordinary application software running on various implementations of the x86. This isn't accidental. | > There is at least one very significant incentive -- driving down system | > cost and enlarging the market by commoditizing the software | |This is something graphics vendors will fight hard against. | They don't want to commoditize the software. ... If you believe that lower device/system costs lead to higher volumes of sales, and software cost is an appreciable fraction of the device/system cost, then commoditizing the software leads to higher revenue for the hardware vendors. That's one reason Linux gained a foothold in the embedded space. Maybe you're thinking primarily about driver software. Graphics vendors do add a tremendous amount of value in their drivers, but even there parts of the software are commoditized when it makes economic sense. Perhaps the commonly-used code in XAA is a good example. | The goal is to have your graphics kill your competitors, and that | is done by preventing commoditization of software and hardware. | It involves outfeaturing and outperforming your competitor and protecting | your software and hardware IP. Certainly that used to be true. Judging by what I hear from app developers, it's getting less true all the time. They really want to stick to standardized functionality that's available with decent performance on all platforms. Their return-on-investment is highest if the hardware is commoditized. And Microsoft maintains its position in part by playing the hardware vendors off against one another. MS wants the best price and performance for the features in its APIs, not for features that aren't part of those APIs. That leaves less room for the hardware vendors to compete on features. Allen ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Allen Akin wrote: > (Sorry for the delayed reply -- I've been travelling.) > > On Sun, Jul 20, 2003 at 04:15:51PM -0700, Mark Vojkovich wrote: > | On Sun, 20 Jul 2003, Allen Akin wrote: > | > ... It may be that there *aren't* any million-dollar > | > per-employee revenue opportunities available in the market. If you > | > want to expand, you have to take the best of the opportunities that are > | > available, even if that means revenue-per-employee goes down. > | > |Correct, however, graphics hardware companies have alot of tangential > | markets they can go into that hold large revenue potential. For example, > | when NVIDIA needed to grow, it didn't try to collect crumbs with software > | opportunities for existing hardware. It got into the core logic business > | with nForce, entering itself in a whole new market. ... > > I don't disagree with the fundamental point you're making, but is nForce > really a good example? There are lots of highly-integrated chipsets out > there. It may be that nForce succeeds primarily because it offers > excellent graphics (NVIDIA's main market strength) at a lower price > point, rather than something wholly new. You'll have a hard time finding reviews of the internal graphics. The interest, at least as far as the press is concerned, seems to be almost totally in the chipset performance. nForce2 is available without internal graphics. If I recall correctly, nForce3 (I believe there were some reviews out today) has no internal graphics. > > | the emerging opportunities for graphics devices: new markets in settop, > | palmtop, cell phones, consoles and other appliances, I get the feeling > | that there are so many markets left untapped, yet not enough resources > | to devote to them all. ... > > Perhaps that's a good reason for NVIDIA to be active (in some way) in > open source efforts. Shared development cost means lower barriers to > entry and higher return per employee. The trick is to get the > functionality you need from the shared development effort, while > avoiding the "free rider" problem. How to do that is worth further > discussion. > > |... I don't expect the current graphics hardware > | companies to ever be in a position where they have to scrape the bottom > | of the barrel for revenue. > > Accepting less than $1M/employee/year is hardly "scraping the bottom of > the barrel." :-) > > But seriously, we're in a good period for graphics market development > right now. It probably won't always be this way. Unless a monopoly > develops, eventually the market will mature, the hardware will become > more commoditized, and margins will go down. The vast majority of > design/manufacturing companies in the world live with lower return than > the top-tier graphics hardware vendors. I do not expect graphics hardware to become a commodity. It is something that graphics hardware vendors fight hard against, and commoditization has not been the trend. > > |Another thing to keep in mind is that users shifting from > | Windows to Linux is not creation of a new market per se. The > | total hardware revenue does not increase. It merely creates more > | work for the vendors as users shift from one platform to another, > | and prevents vendors from being able to focus on one platform. > | Hardware vendors have little incentive to encourage this > | change. ... > > There is at least one very significant incentive -- driving down system > cost and enlarging the market by commoditizing the software This is something graphics vendors will fight hard against. They don't want to commoditize the software. This business is about the software value add as much as it is about the hardware. The goal is to have your graphics kill your competitors, and that is done by preventing commoditization of software and hardware. It involves outfeaturing and outperforming your competitor and protecting your software and hardware IP. > (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html). This is > much harder to do in the general-purpose desktop space than it is in > specialized and embedded systems, so I agree that it's less likely to > happen (or will happen much later) for desktop systems. But it's an > important factor in other markets. > (http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4980264574.html for one example.) > Mark. ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
(Sorry for the delayed reply -- I've been travelling.) On Sun, Jul 20, 2003 at 04:15:51PM -0700, Mark Vojkovich wrote: | On Sun, 20 Jul 2003, Allen Akin wrote: | > ... It may be that there *aren't* any million-dollar | > per-employee revenue opportunities available in the market. If you | > want to expand, you have to take the best of the opportunities that are | > available, even if that means revenue-per-employee goes down. | |Correct, however, graphics hardware companies have alot of tangential | markets they can go into that hold large revenue potential. For example, | when NVIDIA needed to grow, it didn't try to collect crumbs with software | opportunities for existing hardware. It got into the core logic business | with nForce, entering itself in a whole new market. ... I don't disagree with the fundamental point you're making, but is nForce really a good example? There are lots of highly-integrated chipsets out there. It may be that nForce succeeds primarily because it offers excellent graphics (NVIDIA's main market strength) at a lower price point, rather than something wholly new. | the emerging opportunities for graphics devices: new markets in settop, | palmtop, cell phones, consoles and other appliances, I get the feeling | that there are so many markets left untapped, yet not enough resources | to devote to them all. ... Perhaps that's a good reason for NVIDIA to be active (in some way) in open source efforts. Shared development cost means lower barriers to entry and higher return per employee. The trick is to get the functionality you need from the shared development effort, while avoiding the "free rider" problem. How to do that is worth further discussion. |... I don't expect the current graphics hardware | companies to ever be in a position where they have to scrape the bottom | of the barrel for revenue. Accepting less than $1M/employee/year is hardly "scraping the bottom of the barrel." :-) But seriously, we're in a good period for graphics market development right now. It probably won't always be this way. Unless a monopoly develops, eventually the market will mature, the hardware will become more commoditized, and margins will go down. The vast majority of design/manufacturing companies in the world live with lower return than the top-tier graphics hardware vendors. |Another thing to keep in mind is that users shifting from | Windows to Linux is not creation of a new market per se. The | total hardware revenue does not increase. It merely creates more | work for the vendors as users shift from one platform to another, | and prevents vendors from being able to focus on one platform. | Hardware vendors have little incentive to encourage this | change. ... There is at least one very significant incentive -- driving down system cost and enlarging the market by commoditizing the software (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html). This is much harder to do in the general-purpose desktop space than it is in specialized and embedded systems, so I agree that it's less likely to happen (or will happen much later) for desktop systems. But it's an important factor in other markets. (http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4980264574.html for one example.) BTW, thanks for the thought-provoking discussion. Allen ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Tue, 22 Jul 2003, Mike A. Harris wrote: > On Mon, 21 Jul 2003, Fred Heitkamp wrote: > > I'm not sure how "Linux server market" got into the discussion, > or how it's relevant. The only thing I can assume is that one > person in the thread misunderstood another person in the thread. I started it a few posts ago, and quite probably I was not real clear writing what I meant. Simply stated I meant: (Total Linux servers) >> (Total Linux movie rendering machines.) The point I meant to make by that is that video card manufacturers may support the larger server market with decent 2D or console support, but not add good 3D support because it is not required in the server market and the movie rendering population is too small to worry about. > My comment was specifically in response to: > > >> >I'd bet even the big > >> >film studios don't use Linux to view the final rendering. They > >> >probably use a Mac (Apple OS of some kind) or a PC running > >> >Windows. > > I would take you up on that bet in other words. Nothing to do > with Linux server market vs. movie studio Linux market. Just > pointing out that Linux not only thrives in the movie studio > market, but that it is basically taking over that market > entirely. Not overnight, but very increasingly every day. I I have no problem with your conclusion, just that the movie studios may not need the top notch graphics (however movie studios define that), on the linux machines, if they use a Windows, Mac, SGI machine, or other rig, to view the final rendering or construct the graphics scenes in the first place. Fred Error Loading Explorer.exe You must reinstall Windows. ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Mon, 21 Jul 2003, Fred Heitkamp wrote: >> >If the server market is the biggest (and for Linux it is) then >> >only 2D support if that is required. I'd bet even the big >> >film studios don't use Linux to view the final rendering. They >> >probably use a Mac (Apple OS of some kind) or a PC running >> >Windows. >> >> Search google for Dreamworks SKG stories involving Linux. You'll >> be surprised. > >I will do that. But even if you count every cluster node >running Linux rendering movie and TV frames as a separate >machine, I'd still bet it's only a fraction of the total >Linux server market. I'm not sure how "Linux server market" got into the discussion, or how it's relevant. The only thing I can assume is that one person in the thread misunderstood another person in the thread. I'd be astonished if the movie industry were using more machines running _any_ OS on them than the entire Linux server market. But again, that is another topic entirely. My comment was specifically in response to: >> >I'd bet even the big >> >film studios don't use Linux to view the final rendering. They >> >probably use a Mac (Apple OS of some kind) or a PC running >> >Windows. I would take you up on that bet in other words. Nothing to do with Linux server market vs. movie studio Linux market. Just pointing out that Linux not only thrives in the movie studio market, but that it is basically taking over that market entirely. Not overnight, but very increasingly every day. I provided Dreamworks as just a single example of a movie studio that uses Linux extremely heavily for practically everything, and press releases online locatable via google can back that up should someone think otherwise. ;o) -- Mike A. Harris ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
"Mike A. Harris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Excellent post Mike. You hit all the important points and I agree with 99% of what you said, except the following: > (Try calling any video hardware vendor on the telephone for *any* > operating system, including Microsoft Windows and tell them your > video card is crashing and you think it is a driver bug. Watch how > fast every vendor out there will tell you that they do not provide > end user support.) The above is not true for IBM OS/2. If you are an IBM OS/2 customers you can call up IBM and file a bug report with IBM about the video support. Eventually this bug report will find it's way into the IBM CMVCC bug tracking system, to the video support group and then into the SciTech bugzilla database. Then on monday morning IBM bitches at me about the new bug in our database, and asks if we can reproduce it. If we can, we fix it and send them a new build which finds it ways back to the customer for testing and eventually makes it's way into the next official code drop they provide to their customers. If we can reproduce it, we spend (usually a considerable amount of time!) going back and forth with the customer, their test labs and our QA staff until we can reproduce the bug, then we fix it and deliver the fix to IBM. Sure, the process is long winded, but the bugs *do* get fixed ;-). On average though we get very few bug reports this way, primarily because we usually find the bugs during our extensive QA process or if we miss it IBM catches in their own test labs. And the OS/2 product is deployed by many large IBM customers who have one single driver running across their entire enterprise, consiting of thousands to hundreds of thousands of machines all running potentially different graphics cards. Recently we fixed a nasty long standing bug that affected one customer who had 17,000 machines running the same graphics card, causing them to have lockups once every 5-6 reboots. Fun stuff ;-) If you are wondering what my point in all this is, the point is simple. Companies like IBM do fix bugs in drivers for their customers, but their customers pay for this service, and companies like mine get paid to provide that service. It doesn't come free and my company couldn't possibly do this for free on a volunteer basis either. Oh, and companies like ATI, Intel and Matrox are nearly always completely out of the loop in this equation, except to provide the specs and answer the occasional question. Regards, --- Kendall Bennett Chief Executive Officer SciTech Software, Inc. Phone: (530) 894 8400 http://www.scitechsoft.com ~ SciTech SNAP - The future of device driver technology! ~ ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
Sven Luther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Why do these companies not open source their complete drivers? > > Because they have intellectual property in their drivers that > > As if their concurent where not capable of reverse engineering the > drivers. And if they did and they got caught, their company would essentially be destroyed. Proprietry software developers in general do *not* reverse engineer other companies intellectual property. Hell, just try selling software you have developed to IBM and deal with the huge battery of COO (Certificate O Ownership) issues before IBM will accept your product! These companies take intellectual property very seriously, indeed even more seriously now with the SCO lawsuit; now I am glad we have all the COO's in place already and I am sure IBM is too. Regards, --- Kendall Bennett Chief Executive Officer SciTech Software, Inc. Phone: (530) 894 8400 http://www.scitechsoft.com ~ SciTech SNAP - The future of device driver technology! ~ ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
Win: I agree with the spirit of your statement, but I don't want the government involved in any part of what I do for a living or a hobby. I agree that M$'s size is a problem now, but I am certain that they will not be dominant forever. Large companies do fail, and they do get smaller. JC wim delvaux wrote: > > Sorry I interrupt but I wonder why the government does not see (want to see) > that Microsoft in effect is completely blocking the market. Because of its > market size no development into anything new can be performed if it does not > run on windows and since that market is very large, companies do not see need > or opportunity to go into other markets EXCEPT if the windows market is lost > and/or full. > > W -- Jay Cotton [EMAIL PROTECTED] 408 635 0621 x11621 Sun Microsystems Inc. 2515 North First Street, MS USJC07-201 San Jose, CA 95131 Sun Microsystems Inc. - Software QICS/Globalization: X11 Engineering ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Mon, Jul 21, 2003 at 08:04:56AM -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote: > On Sun, 20 Jul 2003, Richard A. Hecker wrote: > > >I will add my own Rant here. Ignoring email from Joe Public who > >bought his 'Puter from Walmart' might work, but I feel 'Dissed' > >when a person insults my intelligence with this respose. > > It isn't an insult to intelligence at all. I don't delete every .. > > Should I cater to these people? If I delete their question, do > you still think I am insulting their intelligence? I did not suggest that you cater to these people. I just pointed out the offense I would take from such an insult. I would remember such an insult during any future dealings I had. > > Your assumptions are fairly accurate. I'm on over 100 mailing > lists, maybe more, I don't count anymore, and use 2 mail clients > (pine) simultaneously across 5 mail accounts. I've no idea how > much mail that is, but probably 5000-1 a day. I don't read > them all of course, nor respond. I have prioritized mail folders > so I get the most important stuff right away, less important > stuff later, and the rest are generally archived for snooping > through or searching when I'm bored or need to search for a > problem or whatever as I prefer to archive lists locally that I > use than to use the klunky web based unreliable search engines. > > This makes sense. I basically agree with you. It comes down to the _priority_ of a message. Everyone has their own priority scheme. This might be a good place for me to bash [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED] accounts. I simply pointed out that you can pretend a message never arrived but some people will see right through that excuse. Richard ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Sun, 20 Jul 2003, Mark Vojkovich wrote: >> I doubt that it would involve hardware as much as it would >> involve the driver aspect and the JIT compiler for the GPU >> perhaps. Having never seen the complete source code of any >> modern proprietary full featured video driver however, it's very >> hard to say. > > Drivers show hardware limitations and workarounds for hardware >bugs. If your competitors know where your bugs and performance >bottlenecks are, they will use that to their advantage. Their >developer relations and marketing will try to get these features >into benchmarks and games so that your hardware looks bad. >That's not being overly paranoid. That's the way it works. >The goal of every vendor is to have a benchmark make their >product look good and their competitor's look bad. The >competition in this business is really ugly. I believe you, and I have seen this happen in online reviews of games, benchmarks, etc. at least for Windows, so I don't think it is paranoid at all. >I'm positive that any graphics hardware vendor that released >source to all their graphics drivers would be out of business >pretty quickly. The first big blow would come from their >competitors, then the stockholder lawsuits would finish them >off. I don't know if that would happen or not, but it is at least hypothetically possible, and would definitely be an unknown "risk" for sure. Something that a publically traded company must consider very carefully, for the reasons you indicate. >The only way they can release any source code at all is to >make sure that it's free of sensitive information, which is too >much work to do on any large scale. It's not likely to even be >considered since there's no tangible benefit to it in the first >place. Well, there are benefits, at least to the community and customers, but I know that you mean "no tangible benefit to the company for doing so", and in order for that to be proven false by anyone to make it even a consideration, one would have to point out specific benefits that the company would personally believe are tangible to *them*. But the majority of people out there who enter the so called "debate", only pass off the obvious benefits to everyone else *but* the company. In order to make something like this tangible, it is very much in the hands of the community to provide a list of real tangible benefits and handle the given concerns of the given company in a way the company is comfortable with. While I believe it is theoretically possible at least, it isn't something that would be easy to solve due to the many complexities involved. And too many people are biased to one side or the other to care about the concerns of the other side, making it not even on the consideration radar. At least that's how I see it. -- Mike A. Harris ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Sun, 20 Jul 2003, Richard A. Hecker wrote: >> I encounter this all the time. If someone asks me "Why does your >> product version x.y not support foo?" and I delete their mail, >> they are none the wiser. They are unlikely to flame me, or to >> even know if I got it. > >I will add my own Rant here. Ignoring email from Joe Public who >bought his 'Puter from Walmart' might work, but I feel 'Dissed' >when a person insults my intelligence with this respose. It isn't an insult to intelligence at all. I don't delete every mail I get, but I don't respond to every one of them either. If I responded to every Red Hat customer or user question and every email I received from someone in the community asking for help or asking what is or isn't supported, I would never get any work done, and would likely not have a job. It is not my job at all in any way, to provide end user technical support via email, telephone, mailing lists, bugzilla or otherwise. Any response to a user or customer that I give, is done as a volunteer because I feel like it. Sometimes I have time to do that, and some times I do not. Sometimes I point people to the appropriate web page on our website or the XFree86 site or wherever, or point them to google, and sometimes I forward their email to someone else inside or outside the company depending on the situation. Other times I don't have the time and hit delete. If you received 30 messages a day asking you "I cant get i845 video to work", would you respond to each of them by hand? Not likely. You might write an FAQ however. Been there, done that. Nobody reads or wants to read an FAQ, and you still get the questions, just as many of them. What's worse, is saying "Did you read the FAQ? http://"; no matter how it's worded is often blown off or even in some cases considered rude. I've had people read the first page of an FAQ, not find what they wanted, then email me, or nail me in IRC and waste my time, to be pointed to the FAQ, and tell them to read the table of contents nad find their question and then read the answer to be told "I don't like to read". Should I cater to these people? If I delete their question, do you still think I am insulting their intelligence? I help enough people out there every day, for free, without it being part of my job, that I don't have any commitment to _anyone_ to answer every email sent to me directly and hand hold a person. That is definitely not my job. Really, if someone wants that level of commitment, purchase a support contract, and call your technical support liason and you can get that level of support. Volunteerism goes so far, and when the volunteer doesn't enjoy it, they're not obligated to give it. Is foo supported? Really it comes down to: Read the release notes. Read the XFree86 support documents on the XFree86 website. Read the Red Hat Hardware compatibility list. Ask on a mailing list, etc. Don't email mharris. ;o) >> time doing so. Also, your company is paying for your time, so if >> you're responding to 5000 users a day to listen to them argue, >> that is hardly worthy usage of your time. >> >> Fortunately, it is Saturday, so I can argue with you until >> Monday. After that, I'll have to delete your mails. ;o) > >My threshold was 300-500 daily emails. Less than 300 was a light >day, and more than 500 kept me from finishing the work I was paid >to do. I have no idea what your data point looks like but I suspect >you use multiple addresses and understand how to sort things into >various folders. I rarely respond and spend 10X to 20X more time >reading than writing email. I would write more code if I did not >get as much email but the spammers make that unlikely :( Your assumptions are fairly accurate. I'm on over 100 mailing lists, maybe more, I don't count anymore, and use 2 mail clients (pine) simultaneously across 5 mail accounts. I've no idea how much mail that is, but probably 5000-1 a day. I don't read them all of course, nor respond. I have prioritized mail folders so I get the most important stuff right away, less important stuff later, and the rest are generally archived for snooping through or searching when I'm bored or need to search for a problem or whatever as I prefer to archive lists locally that I use than to use the klunky web based unreliable search engines. >If you cannot or choose to not respond, that is fine. But own up >to your decision and do not pretend you never received the message. Actually, I've tried that too. I've responded to people as nice PR-speak as possible something to the effect of: "Hi , I'm sorry that I am unable to personally help you to find an answer to your problem, however I can try to direct you to other places where you might find help. Some things you may find useful are: $mailinglist1 $mailinglist2 $mailinglist3 $webURL1 $webURL2 $webURL3 I hope these resources are helpful to you, and
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Sun, 20 Jul 2003, Sven Luther wrote: >Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 14:58:56 +0200 >From: Sven Luther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii >Subject: Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.) I've responded to Sven off list, simply because the message was getting very long, and there are probably not many people interested in reading our conversation anymore, and it is also quite off the topic of XFree86 development. There wasn't anything inherently private about it however, so if anyone wanted to know my response, I'll be glad to email it to them. ;o) -- Mike A. Harris ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Sun, 20 Jul 2003, Mike A. Harris wrote: > On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, Fred Heitkamp wrote: > > > > >If the server market is the biggest (and for Linux it is) then > >only 2D support if that is required. I'd bet even the big > >film studios don't use Linux to view the final rendering. They > >probably use a Mac (Apple OS of some kind) or a PC running > >Windows. > > Search google for Dreamworks SKG stories involving Linux. You'll > be surprised. I will do that. But even if you count every cluster node running Linux rendering movie and TV frames as a separate machine, I'd still bet it's only a fraction of the total Linux server market. Fred Error Loading Explorer.exe You must reinstall Windows. ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
Sorry I interrupt but I wonder why the government does not see (want to see) that Microsoft in effect is completely blocking the market. Because of its market size no development into anything new can be performed if it does not run on windows and since that market is very large, companies do not see need or opportunity to go into other markets EXCEPT if the windows market is lost and/or full. W On Monday 21 July 2003 01:15, Mark Vojkovich wrote: > On Sun, 20 Jul 2003, Allen Akin wrote: > > On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 06:09:44PM -0700, Mark Vojkovich wrote: > > |As for the viability of a particular market, here's an example. > > | Yahoo's business section lists NVIDIA as having 1513 employees and > > | revenue over the last year was $1731 Million. This is revenue of > > | over $1 Million per employee per year. That 1513 includes everybody > > | including secretaries, etc... so there is obviously well over a > > | Million dollars revenue per engineer. One man year of extra work > > | is generally expected to generate at least a Million extra dollars > > | of revenue. If a particular market can't generate that, resources > > | are best allocated to another project. > > > > This is a good rule-of-thumb that everyone should keep in mind. Thanks > > for presenting it so clearly. > > > > It's important not to drive it too far, though. In particular, it's > > simplified in at least two respects: > > > > Opportunity. It may be that there *aren't* any million-dollar > > per-employee revenue opportunities available in the market. If you > > want to expand, you have to take the best of the opportunities that are > > available, even if that means revenue-per-employee goes down. > >Correct, however, graphics hardware companies have alot of tangential > markets they can go into that hold large revenue potential. For example, > when NVIDIA needed to grow, it didn't try to collect crumbs with software > opportunities for existing hardware. It got into the core logic business > with nForce, entering itself in a whole new market. If I look at > the emerging opportunities for graphics devices: new markets in settop, > palmtop, cell phones, consoles and other appliances, I get the feeling > that there are so many markets left untapped, yet not enough resources > to devote to them all. I don't expect the current graphics hardware > companies to ever be in a position where they have to scrape the bottom > of the barrel for revenue. > > > Financials. It takes time for engineering work to be done, and more > > time for a new market to be developed. So the whole effort needs to be > > evaluated as an investment with return over time, not just cash-flow-in > > vs. cash-flow-out. > > > > The open source community needs to address this stuff, too, if it wants > > to make a compelling business case to the vendors. > >Another thing to keep in mind is that users shifting from > Windows to Linux is not creation of a new market per se. The > total hardware revenue does not increase. It merely creates more > work for the vendors as users shift from one platform to another, > and prevents vendors from being able to focus on one platform. > Hardware vendors have little incentive to encourage this > change. They actually have reason to resist it. The case of > professional OpenGL workstations I cited earlier was an > exception. This was a migration from traditional Unix workstation > hardware to Linux PCs. It was a new revenue opportunity for > PC graphics hardware vendors. > > > Mark. > > ___ > Devel mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Sun, 20 Jul 2003, Allen Akin wrote: > On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 06:09:44PM -0700, Mark Vojkovich wrote: > | > |As for the viability of a particular market, here's an example. > | Yahoo's business section lists NVIDIA as having 1513 employees and > | revenue over the last year was $1731 Million. This is revenue of > | over $1 Million per employee per year. That 1513 includes everybody > | including secretaries, etc... so there is obviously well over a > | Million dollars revenue per engineer. One man year of extra work > | is generally expected to generate at least a Million extra dollars > | of revenue. If a particular market can't generate that, resources > | are best allocated to another project. > > This is a good rule-of-thumb that everyone should keep in mind. Thanks for > presenting it so clearly. > > It's important not to drive it too far, though. In particular, it's > simplified in at least two respects: > > Opportunity. It may be that there *aren't* any million-dollar > per-employee revenue opportunities available in the market. If you > want to expand, you have to take the best of the opportunities that are > available, even if that means revenue-per-employee goes down. Correct, however, graphics hardware companies have alot of tangential markets they can go into that hold large revenue potential. For example, when NVIDIA needed to grow, it didn't try to collect crumbs with software opportunities for existing hardware. It got into the core logic business with nForce, entering itself in a whole new market. If I look at the emerging opportunities for graphics devices: new markets in settop, palmtop, cell phones, consoles and other appliances, I get the feeling that there are so many markets left untapped, yet not enough resources to devote to them all. I don't expect the current graphics hardware companies to ever be in a position where they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for revenue. > > Financials. It takes time for engineering work to be done, and more > time for a new market to be developed. So the whole effort needs to be > evaluated as an investment with return over time, not just cash-flow-in > vs. cash-flow-out. > > The open source community needs to address this stuff, too, if it wants to make > a compelling business case to the vendors. Another thing to keep in mind is that users shifting from Windows to Linux is not creation of a new market per se. The total hardware revenue does not increase. It merely creates more work for the vendors as users shift from one platform to another, and prevents vendors from being able to focus on one platform. Hardware vendors have little incentive to encourage this change. They actually have reason to resist it. The case of professional OpenGL workstations I cited earlier was an exception. This was a migration from traditional Unix workstation hardware to Linux PCs. It was a new revenue opportunity for PC graphics hardware vendors. Mark. ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 06:09:44PM -0700, Mark Vojkovich wrote: | |As for the viability of a particular market, here's an example. | Yahoo's business section lists NVIDIA as having 1513 employees and | revenue over the last year was $1731 Million. This is revenue of | over $1 Million per employee per year. That 1513 includes everybody | including secretaries, etc... so there is obviously well over a | Million dollars revenue per engineer. One man year of extra work | is generally expected to generate at least a Million extra dollars | of revenue. If a particular market can't generate that, resources | are best allocated to another project. This is a good rule-of-thumb that everyone should keep in mind. Thanks for presenting it so clearly. It's important not to drive it too far, though. In particular, it's simplified in at least two respects: Opportunity. It may be that there *aren't* any million-dollar per-employee revenue opportunities available in the market. If you want to expand, you have to take the best of the opportunities that are available, even if that means revenue-per-employee goes down. Financials. It takes time for engineering work to be done, and more time for a new market to be developed. So the whole effort needs to be evaluated as an investment with return over time, not just cash-flow-in vs. cash-flow-out. The open source community needs to address this stuff, too, if it wants to make a compelling business case to the vendors. Allen ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Sun, 20 Jul 2003, Mike A. Harris wrote: > On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, Daniel Stone wrote: > > >> No, there you are exagerating. I hardly doubt that they would go broke > >> or whatever if they released open source drivers. If anything, they > >> would sell more boards. > > > >Not very many, and their competitirs would then have access to all their IP, so > >could out-do them in the next generation of cards. > > I doubt that it would involve hardware as much as it would > involve the driver aspect and the JIT compiler for the GPU > perhaps. Having never seen the complete source code of any > modern proprietary full featured video driver however, it's very > hard to say. Drivers show hardware limitations and workarounds for hardware bugs. If your competitors know where your bugs and performance bottlenecks are, they will use that to their advantage. Their developer relations and marketing will try to get these features into benchmarks and games so that your hardware looks bad. That's not being overly paranoid. That's the way it works. The goal of every vendor is to have a benchmark make their product look good and their competitor's look bad. The competition in this business is really ugly. I'm positive that any graphics hardware vendor that released source to all their graphics drivers would be out of business pretty quickly. The first big blow would come from their competitors, then the stockholder lawsuits would finish them off. The only way they can release any source code at all is to make sure that it's free of sensitive information, which is too much work to do on any large scale. It's not likely to even be considered since there's no tangible benefit to it in the first place. Mark. ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Sun, Jul 20, 2003 at 03:10:14AM -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote: .. > More likely than not it is a case of "it's better to not say > anything at all, than to try and be honest and explain your > position and then have people attack you endlessly with more > ferocity than they'd have done had you not said anything". > > I encounter this all the time. If someone asks me "Why does your > product version x.y not support foo?" and I delete their mail, > they are none the wiser. They are unlikely to flame me, or to > even know if I got it. > I will add my own Rant here. Ignoring email from Joe Public who bought his 'Puter from Walmart' might work, but I feel 'Dissed' when a person insults my intelligence with this respose. > > Worse, you waste your time doing so, and your company time. > Should these companies hire 50 people to respond to all of these > emails to listen to users argue with them? No. Hit delete, and > let it go. The user may be upset for not getting a response, but > they're going to more often be a lot less upset than hearing > the truth and wanting to argue with you and waste a lot of your > time doing so. Also, your company is paying for your time, so if > you're responding to 5000 users a day to listen to them argue, > that is hardly worthy usage of your time. > > Fortunately, it is Saturday, so I can argue with you until > Monday. After that, I'll have to delete your mails. ;o) > My threshold was 300-500 daily emails. Less than 300 was a light day, and more than 500 kept me from finishing the work I was paid to do. I have no idea what your data point looks like but I suspect you use multiple addresses and understand how to sort things into various folders. I rarely respond and spend 10X to 20X more time reading than writing email. I would write more code if I did not get as much email but the spammers make that unlikely :( If you cannot or choose to not respond, that is fine. But own up to your decision and do not pretend you never received the message. Richard ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Sun, Jul 20, 2003 at 02:22:10AM -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote: > On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Sven Luther wrote: > > >> driver models differ greatly. The kernel code would be custom > >> code written for the given operating systems involved, and almost > >> certainly written for high end high paying customers in the > >> scientific and other high end 3D customers in the marketplace. > > > >Maybe they could have the whole X driver and kernel module in open > >source, and only keep the opengl library as proprietary stuff. I more or > >less doubt they have any IP involved in these part, at least some really > >meaningfull stuff. This would it make much easier for user installations > >too, i think. > > Your guess is wrong. The kernel part contains the part that is > probably one of their most prized pieces of IP. I wont get into > details about that however as I don't know if discussing it would > violate my NDA with ATI or not. I do know however, that if there Well, i guess the other GPU manufacturer do it almost the same way, and also think it is higly secret stuff. > is one part of the drivers that would be the most unlikely to be > open sourced, it is the binary kernel blob. It does significant Which is the one place were the GPLed code place special restriction on using proprietary hardware, depending on who you ask naturally. > things that require extremely detailed in depth knowledge of the > chip way beyond anything anyone involved in OSS Radeon driver > development outside of ATI is likely to have docs or knowledge > on. I realize I can't "prove" this in any legal way for the > non-believers without possibly violating NDA, so believe what you > will. No, it is ok, i believe you. > I'd love to see it open sourced with complete details, but > realistically it isn't going to happen from _any_ vendor IMHO. Then they have to take the consequences, and provide proprietary drivers for all the architectures their hardware is probable to run on, which means that ati and nvidia should at least provide powerpc binaries, since powerpc is the most used arch after x86, and all of the apple ones are coming with nvidia or ati chips. The older ati based one where ok, since we had the r200 drivers, but not the nvidia ones, nor the newer radeon ones. I was going to buy a new powerbook, but there will probably never be open source 3D drivers for them, which means ATI or Nvidia have to provide them. Sure it cost them some, but this is the prize of doing closed source drivers. And if their drivers are of good quality, it should cost them no more than a rebuild on said arches, since both of them have mac OS X drivers anyway. > No vendor has provided that level of documentation to open source > vendors before. We get microcode to upload to the chips, and > that gives us something at least. Something better than nothing > IMHO, and I hope we continue to get this in the future too. I understand. > >> Why do these companies not open source their complete drivers? > >> Because they have intellectual property in their drivers that > > > >As if their concurent where not capable of reverse engineering the > >drivers. > > Reverse engineering that level of code with no detailed knowledge > of the specific hardware underneath is an exercise in futility. > I challenge anyone to reverse engineer how any mainstream GPU > microcode engine works and produce any useful information on it > to be used by OSS developers to write a compiler to create new > microcode on the fly in the driver. If I see that within the Sure, it is futile for anyone, but the graphic chip industry has higly capable people with indepth knowledge of how graphic hardware does work. At least they should get as much information out of it than what you find in standard chip documentation. > next 20 years for even the oldest of Radeon hardware, I'll fall > off my chair in total shock. Not to mention that doing so is > probably even illegal in many countries, and would prevent any > knowledge gained from being used. Then there's the issue of Well, it is not illegal everywhere, and even the PC industry did that with the first IBM clones, so i guess even in the US it should be possible. That said, i don't think it is more legal to sell me hardware and then don't give me the necessary means to make use of it. It would be like selling cars without wheels. > anything reverse engineered possibly being patented also, making > it useless in OSS (in countries the patents are covered by). > > In short: Mindboggling amount of effort, for little to no gain, Compared to just run a powerpc build, and maybe for some other arch who also has agp support ? But then they have others, less savory reason for not doing that. > and in 10 years if anyone makes any actual useful progress, they > may find themselves faced with a legal "go away now" notice from > the particular IP owner in question. > > It would be interesting however to see someon
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, 2003-07-18 at 14:30, Dan wrote: > > Sure Quake works, and xscreensaver and the xmms plugins. Cool. But a > majority of the games I have don't work: Tribes 2 ( crashes on startup > ), Unreal Tournament 2003 ( previously required S3 Texture Compression, > now has far too many rendering bugs to be able to tell what's going on) > , Neverwinter Nights ( runs at 1 frame every 5 seconds - and yes I have > DRI working ). FWIW, most if not all of these problems have been fixed or are being worked on in DRI CVS. Watch the dri-devel and dri-patches lists. -- Earthling Michel Dänzer \ Debian (powerpc), XFree86 and DRI developer Software libre enthusiast \ http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=daenzer ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, Daniel Stone wrote: >> No, there you are exagerating. I hardly doubt that they would go broke >> or whatever if they released open source drivers. If anything, they >> would sell more boards. > >Not very many, and their competitirs would then have access to all their IP, so >could out-do them in the next generation of cards. I doubt that it would involve hardware as much as it would involve the driver aspect and the JIT compiler for the GPU perhaps. Having never seen the complete source code of any modern proprietary full featured video driver however, it's very hard to say. -- Mike A. Harris ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, Fred Heitkamp wrote: >> For consumer desktop that's true. There is one potential business >> case in the professional desktop market. SGI's, HP's and Sun's old >> workstation customers have been moving over to Linux. All the film >> studios are using Linux, for instance. The volume is small but the >> margins on the professional cards is high so there is a chance that >> it might actually make money some day. If it weren't for this >> potential in the professional market, NVIDIA probably wouldn't have >> any binary Linux drivers. The real target of those drivers is the >> NVIDIA Quadro line not the GeForce line. > >If the server market is the biggest (and for Linux it is) then >only 2D support if that is required. I'd bet even the big >film studios don't use Linux to view the final rendering. They >probably use a Mac (Apple OS of some kind) or a PC running >Windows. Search google for Dreamworks SKG stories involving Linux. You'll be surprised. -- Mike A. Harris ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Mark Vojkovich wrote: >> No, ATI makes money when IBM orders 2 million Rage chips for their next >> generation laptop. If IBM made the deal conditional on ATI providing high- >> quality, high-functionality XFree86 drivers, you can bet they would trip over >> their shoelaces in providing that. However, they don't. IBM makes the deal >> conditional on great WinXP drivers and great DX9 support, because to 3 >> standard deviations, that's what its customers want. >> >> In business terms, the Linux market is not relevant. Sad but true. > > For consumer desktop that's true. There is one potential business >case in the professional desktop market. SGI's, HP's and Sun's old >workstation customers have been moving over to Linux. All the film >studios are using Linux, for instance. The volume is small but the >margins on the professional cards is high so there is a chance that >it might actually make money some day. If it weren't for this >potential in the professional market, NVIDIA probably wouldn't have >any binary Linux drivers. The real target of those drivers is the >NVIDIA Quadro line not the GeForce line. I've been trying to tell pretty much every person who comes to me talking about _any_ company's proprietary video hardware drivers, that those drivers were not written for fun, nor for gaming. They were written for high end 3D customers such as the movie industry, scientific, geological, medical, etc. However, some people are brainlocked to think that the drivers are written for video gaming in Linux. Nobody wants to believe that there has to be a business case for this stuff to exist for some reason, and just thinks companies write drivers like the Nvidia, ATI, and other drivers and provide them for download for video gaming or charity or something. With your permission, I'd like to be able to forward your email to people in the future, to help them understand this right from the horse's mouth so to speak. And if so, I thank you very much. ;o) > Ironically, the Linux desktop community doesn't target the >only potential business case there is. It's often at odds with >it. Workstation users like a platform that doesn't change and >anything that risks damaging OpenGL behavior (like RandR support >or alpha blended cursors) is generally not well accepted. Indeed. With new features getting added each release, it's hard to both progress toward the current technology trend and also sustain a stable supportable platform, while also supporting the latest video hardware. To stick with an older XFree86 release for example, means you might not get the latest features, but your X server does not change drastically every n months. However, then when a new video card comes out and you need to use it, you have no choice but to upgrade to a new XFree86 release. I see this very problem very often, and it's not easily solveable IMHO, because you've got the needs of the end user, the needs of the OS vendor, the needs of the driver developer/provider and the needs of the X11 implementation project all conflicting to a certain extent (while overlapping in others). I believe however that it is possible to increase the overlapping of needs in the mid to long run, and minimize the amount of conflicting needs, but it will take time to get there. > As for the viability of a particular market, here's an example. >Yahoo's business section lists NVIDIA as having 1513 employees and >revenue over the last year was $1731 Million. This is revenue of >over $1 Million per employee per year. That 1513 includes everybody >including secretaries, etc... so there is obviously well over a >Million dollars revenue per engineer. One man year of extra work >is generally expected to generate at least a Million extra dollars >of revenue. If a particular market can't generate that, resources >are best allocated to another project. That backs up what I've been trying to say the last 3-4 messages very well, only again with less verbiage than I, and with more numerical information. ;o) I think I can just about shut the F up soon now. Thanks. ;o) Take care, TTYL -- Mike A. Harris ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Tim Roberts wrote: >>On the other hand.. If more people who didn't want to have to run >>another OS to access features that are not well supported because of >>lack of knowledge on how to support them would comment/complain >>(oh alright -BITCH-) maybe the hardware vendors would realize that there >>is a viable market for their devices to be used on the second class OS's > >The reality of the business end of this is just brutal. The unfortunate fact >is that your "viable market" is completely insignificant. > >ATI doesn't make money from you. ATI doesn't make money from the few tens of >thousands of Linux users out there. At their margins, that probably pays for >part of one engineer's salary. > >No, ATI makes money when IBM orders 2 million Rage chips for their next >generation laptop. If IBM made the deal conditional on ATI providing high- >quality, high-functionality XFree86 drivers, you can bet they would trip over >their shoelaces in providing that. However, they don't. IBM makes the deal >conditional on great WinXP drivers and great DX9 support, because to 3 >standard deviations, that's what its customers want. > >In business terms, the Linux market is not relevant. Sad but true. > >>I would actually be satisfied with Binary only drivers that would >>support the whole card. But, there aren't enough people letting them >>know that there is an interest (OOPS that would be BITCHING!). > >And even if EVERY person let them kinow there was an interest, it still >wouldn't be enough. There just aren't enough of us. Sigh... Once again you say more or less in about 10 sentences what I am thinking and trying to relay in 300 sentences. Are you for hire or what? ;o) -- Mike A. Harris ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On 18 Jul 2003, William Suetholz wrote: >> The binary ones, or the open source ones? Either way, your >> question isn't very clear. "What's the deal" doesn't mean a lot. >> >I am not aware of any open source drivers directly available from ATI. That is because ATI contributes their open source code directly to the XFree86 project. There is no separate open source ATI driver project, it is _part_ of XFree86 to start with. Just look at the XFree86 changelogs for any credits mentioning (ATI), (Hui Yu), (Alexander Stohr), or other ATI employees. Usually the credits are logged as "ATI" or Hui. The patches that are submitted are non-trivial, and without them the open source ATI Radeon driver wouldn't support half of the hardware it does, nor a lot of the functionality. >> are unsupported - just like any company's drivers are unsupported >> on any OS platform. (Try calling any video hardware vendor on >> the telephone for *any* operating system, including Microsoft >> Windows and tell them your video card is crashing and you think >> it is a driver bug. Watch how fast every vendor out there will >> tell you that they do not provide end user support.) > >Not entirely true.. I have gotten support from ATI in getting their >stuff to work under NT and other MS systems. I'll consider that an exception to the rule. The majority of people I know who have ever called any video hardware vendor for anything have been told "we do not provide end user technical support for our products, sorry" or something to that effect. If your call was of a business nature, or you are a higher end customer, then I would be less surprised though. ;o) >> everything, open source their proprietary drivers, sell their >> company and donate the money to the XFree86 project, and people >> would still find something to bitch thanklessly about and >> complain about some bug they find. >> >On the other hand.. If more people who didn't want to have to run >another OS to access features that are not well supported because of >lack of knowledge on how to support them would comment/complain >(oh alright -BITCH-) maybe the hardware vendors would realize that there >is a viable market for their devices to be used on the second class OS's > >And, I'm sure that ATI has a file on me :-) I've been commenting on >this directly to them for some time. People need to do that to their computer manufacturer really. The major computer manufacturers such as Dell, HP, Gateway, IBM and others. Until *they* start supporting Linux on the home desktop, I very much don't think anything will change. Once they do however, then the IHV's listed above and others will be the ones wanting Linux support, and the volume of sales involved justifies a bottom line to the video hardware vendor to do the work. It has to be commoditized first however in order for it to be considered any kind of priority. IMHO anyway. >> If I sound like the devil's advocate, I assure you I'm not. I'm >> just tired of hearing random people bitch and beak off about this >> type of crap who don't put any sort of thought whatsoever into >> the business, legal, copyright/trademark/patent, or engineering >> costs and other factors that affect these types of decisions in >> companies out there. Try to look at things from the angle of the >> given company out there for once. > >Yes I am a random person, and, I'm a nobody who must be a pretty >terrible person to want to use something other than a MS supported >product to utilize the features that the card was purchased for. >And, I must never (in the 5-7 years I've been asking for this) have >thought about the business side of things. There is a big difference between wanting something and realizing the realities of why a vendor wont provide it to you. *I* want support equal or greater to that which you would like to see. I would love to see it more than anything, with a VERY strong preference to open source. I'm not _personally_ interested in proprietary drivers, but I know others out there aren't biased one way or another and just want something that in their minds "works". But I know it wont happen until there is a visible and measureable money stream on some financial chart on a suit's desk that shows that supporting Linux affects the corporate bottom line for $COMPANY. I can understand and relate to that, despite wanting to see as much Linux support as possible. >I would actually be satisfied with Binary only drivers that >would support the whole card. But, there aren't enough people >letting them know that there is an interest (OOPS that would be >BITCHING!). Perhaps the problem is that people are writing directly to the video hardware vendor, and perhaps the majority are doing so with angry emails and phone calls or somesuch. Really though, until Dell/HP/IBM/Gateway/whoever start saying "video vendor foo, we require video drivers for Linux as we will be supportin
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Tim Roberts wrote: >>Maybe they could have the whole X driver and kernel module in open >>source, and only keep the opengl library as proprietary stuff. I more or >>less doubt they have any IP involved in these part, at least some really >>meaningfull stuff. > >Unfortunately, "interesting" and "meaningful" are NOT among the >criteria used by the US Patent and Trademark Office in awarding >patents. The fact is most chip companies DO hold patents on >some peculiar aspect of their chips, and they have to pretend to >protect them in order to maintain their usefulness. > >Most people don't realize how much the patent business has >turned from being an invention protector into one big Pokemon >game. Company A decides to attack Company B. They lay down >three of their patents in the Pokemon arena and say, "AHA!, you >violate these patents, please pay me a million a year or I'll >sue." > >Company B goes back to their Pokedex, chooses three likely >candidates from THEIR patent portfolio, and responsd "AHA!, you >are violating OUR patents! Sign this cross-licensing agreement >or my Charizard's flame thrower attack will turn you to ashes." > >The two companies sign the agreement in order to avoid the court >system, put their patents back into their Pokeballs, and life >goes on. They have to have patents in order to make their >Pokemon card deck strong enough to survive battles like that. > >Of course, this is all anathema to the open source and free >software movements. > >This e-mail also demonstrates that my children have spent WAY >too much time with Pokemon. My my Tim, you have such an eloquent way of describing this stuff. ;o) I'll have to save your post so I can forward it to the next person who starts the same flamewar in 2 weeks. ;o) You sure hit the nail right on the head, and this is what the average person really doesn't understand IMHO. Good post! TTYL -- Mike A. Harris ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Dan wrote: >>We get what the lawyers say we can have basically, and we should >>be glad to get that, especially if the alternative is nothing. > > From an end-user's point of view, this argument doesn't cut it. It doesn't have to cut it. If a product does not do what you do not want it to do or expect it to do, or if a company/vendor/whatever does not provide or support a product which meets your personal needs or work the way you require or expect, then it is simple. Repeat after me: Do not purchase the product that does not meet your needs. >The fact that ATI have contributed code for a 2D driver doesn't move me. >In fact I don't even use the 2D driver - the only time I run X with my >Radeon I use the VESA driver for it, as it's the only way I can get >tv-out working in X, but admittedly that's only when I leave my >girlfriend with the computer and she wants a gui interface to mplayer >with tv-out. I don't think that the product you are using was designed, developed, marketed, supported, or advertised for the purpose that you are trying to use it for however, as much as you may or may not want to use it for that purpose. You may be upset by that, but really. Purchase the right tool for the right job, and in some cases that might very well mean that you can't use OSS to solve the job at hand. >Sure Quake works, and xscreensaver and the xmms plugins. Cool. But a >majority of the games I have don't work: Tribes 2 ( crashes on startup >), Unreal Tournament 2003 ( previously required S3 Texture Compression, I feel pretty confident to say that none of the video hardware companies which either support XFree86/OSS with open and/or close source drivers are doing so for the Linux video gaming market. Video gaming in Linux is a cool thing for Linux enthusiasts such as yourself, and for myself, however it is not something which is driving the production of video drivers. If any of the numerous video hardware vendors out there reading this are in fact specifically targeting their drivers to the Linux gamers out there, please speak up. I have a feeling I'll see a vow of silence on this one. The drivers are produced for high end CAD and 3D animation and scientific usage such as geological exploration, and medical. They are thrown over the fence more unsupported and more or less as-is to the unwashed masses (of which I consider myself as well for the purpose of this statement) in hopes that if other people get them to work with whatever software they use, great. I would be surpised, no, shocked to find out that the production of Linux video drivers is *aimed* at improving their corporate financial bottom line, by selling hardware to Linux gamers or home enthusiasts. >now has far too many rendering bugs to be able to tell what's >going on) , Neverwinter Nights ( runs at 1 frame every 5 >seconds - and yes I have DRI working ). Most likely, the scientific, medical and 3D animation customers that the drivers were written and are maintained for have not encountered these problems in the 3D software that they use for business purposes. >While I certainly don't just sit here playing games all day, I >bought my Radeon for 2 reasons, and 2D support wasn't one of >them - $AUS 500 is too much for just 2D support. I wanted 3D >acceleration, and multimedia ( tv in & out ). Of these, 3D >acceleration doesn't work with my games, tv-out >kinda-just-barely works on the console ( but I assume someone >will eventually 'fix' this so it doesn't work at all ) and >tv-in I believe works, ( but not if compiled with gcc-3.x. - I >suppose this is fair enough ). You purchased hardware that has drivers that were not developed and are not _supported_ for the purposes that you wish to use them for. You are very much in a position of caveat emptor. >If ATI have provided more documentation than all other hardware >vendors combined then that is an interesting statistic, but it >doesn't address the above end-user issues. However I have read a >number of threads in the Gatos mailing list about ATI not even >responding to requests for documentation for the newer Rage >Theatre chips for the past *year*. And ATI is the market leader for that kind of hardware functionality. I presume they don't want all of their competitors to have similar functionality in their next generation video hardware. >Responding with a reason why the documentation is not available >would be something. Yes, it would be something that the community would use to start a never ending thread to counteract whatever the reasons are. More likely than not it is a case of "it's better to not say anything at all, than to try and be honest and explain your position and then have people attack you endlessly with more ferocity than they'd have done had you not said anything". I encounter this all the time. If someone asks me "Why does your product version x.y not support foo?" and I delete
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Fred Heitkamp wrote: >> > Why do these companies not open source their complete drivers? >> > Because they have intellectual property in their drivers that >> >> As if their concurent where not capable of reverse engineering the >> drivers. > >Because it takes money and manpower. They are not going to do pull >engineers off of more lucrative projects to get them little if any >more profit. Not to mention that any resources they do throw at Linux development will likely result in massive numbers of users bitching "that is not good enough damnit!" no matter what they do, unless they totally drop all Windows support and become a Linux-only hardware company devoted to producing Linux drivers above all else, and spend as many resources as possible on fixing every reported end-user problem that comes up, and hand holding users for free on installing and using their software. ;o) Unlikely to say the least. >> No, there you are exagerating. I hardly doubt that they would go broke >> or whatever if they released open source drivers. If anything, they >> would sell more boards. > >Probably not enough to make the effort worthwhile. Probably the >only reason they do the FireGL drivers at all is because they already >had UNIX drivers folks were willing to pay big bucks for. Precicely. And if I understand correctly, it was good will more or less that caused changes to be made to support Radeon hardware. I haven't personally seen much end user gratitude on mailing lists, IRC or the web for that either. Most of it has been very negative and what I would classify as "thankless bitching". It is of no surprise to me that there are no 4.3.0 compatible drivers on the website (last I checked anyway), although there are on a German website. -- Mike A. Harris ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Fred Heitkamp wrote: >I appreciate all the work various folks have done to move Linux >along. I have used Linux since about kernel 0.99. Now for me >at least Linux has become my daily OS. (I used to use OS/2 >daily and Linux as my secondary OS.) Many Thanks to All! > >I also understand the capitalist elements you detail. I am not >a hard core (meaning religious or fanatical) open source advocate. >Open source just makes good sense. I could go into the various >reasons why, but I won't and it's probably obvious to anyone >on this list anyway. I am a quite hardcore open source advocate, although I do not classify myself as "religious" or "fanatical" though. One of the differences that separate me from some other advocates however, is that I understand some of the "capitalistic elements" very well that arise such as this one we've been discussing, and I am able to put myself into a neutral mind state, and look at the open source angle, and express my desires to have all hardware specifications available and as much open source code as possible, as well as understanding the corporate angle of the vendor, and why their decisions are chosen for what is best or "perceived to be the best" for their own likelyhood. Even if I very strongly desire to see something open sourced, I realize if the other party can not legally do something, or does not see the benefit of doing so, to *THEM* in their *OWN* eyes for reasons they *CARE* about for their financial success, and other factors important to *THEM*, then it stands to reason they wont do it. Would you? In fact, doing something like that might even get them in trouble with the SEC, and they'd most surely have to inform stockholders via SEC reports of the risks they'd be taking by open sourcing their stuff (assuming they legally could, which is almost certainly not true). More likely than not, a day later their stock would plummet and their competitor's stock would raise. >I wish some sort of compromise could be reached where the >proprietary never-to-be-open-sourced bits could be made to >coexist with the open bits in a timely manner. Matrox does this for some of their stuff via hallib. It does not however do everything that the other full proprietary drivers from other vendors do though, and the Matrox hallib does not make the mga driver comparable to their Windows driver offerings. It just improves the support of mode setup, adds dualhead on G400, and makes TVout work among a few other things. One thing that *could* be done which would be beneficial to OSS users, would be to have the large GPU engine removed from the kernel and done in userland, with a fast method of communicating to the hardware. That is completely possible in theory, and it would be great to see happen sometime. Not likely to happen until it is considered something financially worthy of spending the resources on though. >What I mean is that I don't like waiting for months and months >for various hardware and features to be supported by Linux. I >don't mean just with Xfree, but with other parts of Linux as >well, like media players and so forth. (My goal is never to >have to boot Windows for anything.) I don't know what a >workable solution from a technology aspect would be. Perhaps >some consistent pluggable module API or library scheme? Who likes waiting for anything? Everyone would like hardware to be supported with equal or better attention spent developing Linux/OSS support as is paid to Windows. I just isn't realistic however to expect a corporation to spend 50% of their development time supporting an OS that generates 1% of their revenue (or 0.01% or whatever). If anything, I would guess that many hardware vendors _already_ spend more percentage of resources on Linux development than they see percentagewise return of revenue for doing so. Of course that is likely true for some types of hardware and probably totally false for other types of hardware. I also have no statistics to back up this opinion, and I very well could be very wrong. I'll also likely change my opinion in 12 months, and then again every 4 to 6 months after that, as Linux's mainstream desktop usage curve increases. BTW, XFree86 has a module API ;o) -- Mike A. Harris ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Sven Luther wrote: >> driver models differ greatly. The kernel code would be custom >> code written for the given operating systems involved, and almost >> certainly written for high end high paying customers in the >> scientific and other high end 3D customers in the marketplace. > >Maybe they could have the whole X driver and kernel module in open >source, and only keep the opengl library as proprietary stuff. I more or >less doubt they have any IP involved in these part, at least some really >meaningfull stuff. This would it make much easier for user installations >too, i think. Your guess is wrong. The kernel part contains the part that is probably one of their most prized pieces of IP. I wont get into details about that however as I don't know if discussing it would violate my NDA with ATI or not. I do know however, that if there is one part of the drivers that would be the most unlikely to be open sourced, it is the binary kernel blob. It does significant things that require extremely detailed in depth knowledge of the chip way beyond anything anyone involved in OSS Radeon driver development outside of ATI is likely to have docs or knowledge on. I realize I can't "prove" this in any legal way for the non-believers without possibly violating NDA, so believe what you will. I'd love to see it open sourced with complete details, but realistically it isn't going to happen from _any_ vendor IMHO. No vendor has provided that level of documentation to open source vendors before. We get microcode to upload to the chips, and that gives us something at least. Something better than nothing IMHO, and I hope we continue to get this in the future too. >> Why do these companies not open source their complete drivers? >> Because they have intellectual property in their drivers that > >As if their concurent where not capable of reverse engineering the >drivers. Reverse engineering that level of code with no detailed knowledge of the specific hardware underneath is an exercise in futility. I challenge anyone to reverse engineer how any mainstream GPU microcode engine works and produce any useful information on it to be used by OSS developers to write a compiler to create new microcode on the fly in the driver. If I see that within the next 20 years for even the oldest of Radeon hardware, I'll fall off my chair in total shock. Not to mention that doing so is probably even illegal in many countries, and would prevent any knowledge gained from being used. Then there's the issue of anything reverse engineered possibly being patented also, making it useless in OSS (in countries the patents are covered by). In short: Mindboggling amount of effort, for little to no gain, and in 10 years if anyone makes any actual useful progress, they may find themselves faced with a legal "go away now" notice from the particular IP owner in question. It would be interesting however to see someone reverse engineer several hundred Kb of kernel code with no hardware knowledge of the GPU internals. I'd be amused to just watch someone start such a project. ;o) >> By these companies contributing to open source drivers however >> (ATI contributes heavily to the radeon driver, and Nvidia to the >> "nv" driver), they are still contributing to the open source >> community, and they are providing users with an alternative to >> use that is outside of any legally binding agreements that code >> might contain in their own full proprietary drivers. > >I have no problem for them to go proprietary, but i would very much like >a powerpc version of said drivers. Since both of them also release >drivers for MacOSX, i guess this would not be very expensive to just >rebuild powerpc versions of them. Or for other arches too. I think this >is the cost the graphic companies have to pay for not releasing the >source code. Perhaps if said companies business and marketing departments determine that producing PPC drivers will be in the best interests of their stockholders, they might decide to book engineering resources to produce PPC drivers. The lack of such drivers would indicate to me that there is not enough revenue predicted to be generated by allocating such resources that such drivers are more cost to develop than any financial gains received by doing so. I'm no financial analyst by any stretch of the imagination. Running a publically traded company on a charity basis however is a good way to upset stockholders. There is a huge difference in "what would be nice if" and "is considered economically viable by company $foo's financial department". I agree with you for sure on the "would be nice if" part. But I understand the financial realities that a smart publically traded companies must use to shape their decision making processes too. >> >After all their drivers don't support XV at all, so you can't >> >use the multimedia capabilities of some of their integrated >> >cards
RE: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
> From: William Suetholz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Mr. Harris, yes I am one of "Those people" who want a device to work > in my chosen operating system, /me wants "Commodore 64 - BASIC BIOS 2.0" support, call it my favorite! Cool machine, boots in 2 seconds to a fully useable prompt. It must be an important platform therefore. Really, i dont lie. > and have been frustrated that while > things have gotten a bit better than they were in 1998, the > OS and users > that use it are still considered second class by the device > manufactureres despite some very quiet lip service on the > manufacturers > part. Nope, its rather Win XP, Win 2000, Win ME, Win 9x, Win NT 4.0 and then comes the Apple platform. I dont want to count, but since my C64 was sold more than a million units i think its more important than your platform. *guessing* > I still am not able to use the > DVD playback > acceleration features, because the chopped that out of the docs. Then it must be something that is called intellectual property that those vendor dont want to expose to other parties since it is either valueable by its design or a unit with rights pending from others that have charged money for giving it away on a per unit base or other license sheme. I dont know. > Not entirely true.. I have gotten support from ATI in getting their > stuff to work under NT and other MS systems. Seems their sales do include a support fee for the meintioned platform. But they cant charge you a support fee for already sold boards. Or can you give me an idea how that could work? > On the other hand.. If more people who didn't want to have to run > another OS to access features that are not well supported because of > lack of knowledge on how to support them would comment/complain > (oh alright -BITCH-) maybe the hardware vendors would realize > that there > is a viable market for their devices to be used on the second > class OS's Hmm, someone else explained quite interestingly why a 1000:1 number of users is a good reason for considering them as an UN-important amount. > And, I'm sure that ATI has a file on me :-) I've been commenting on > this directly to them for some time. Lets see how long it takes to accumulate enough for such comments to improve the situation to your total pleasence. Its only the very last resort of DVD decoding accelleartion support, got it right? > Yes I am a random person, and, I'm a nobody who must be a pretty > terrible person to want to use something other than a MS supported > product to utilize the features that the card was purchased for. > And, I must never (in the 5-7 years I've been asking for this) have > thought about the business side of things. You know its the vendors decision what he providew with the product. And it was your decision to accept that product for your targets. Maybe there was really no better choice at that moment for you. But you got miscs commitments over the years which significantly did improve your situation - there was really no strong base (like a sales promise) for that vendor that urged him to perform like that. I would call that a rather friendly act or better a gift. Didnt you like that sort of gift? Would you be happier if its withdrawn? > I would actually be satisfied with Binary only drivers that would > support the whole card. But, there aren't enough people letting them > know that there is an interest (OOPS that would be BITCHING!). Its becoming nearly a habit for you. *gg* Dont you think the OpenSource programmers could understand that sort of speech in a non friendly as well? i think they dont have problems in that sort of co-existance. its merely that some Linux users always switch between those two worlds all the time when in a bashing mood. > XFree86 has an interest in the drivers that have been forked into > other projects. And, the group has a working relationship with the > vendors in question, which means that such concerns can be > expressed in > places that will result in the best possible result. Rather > than Random > people (never call them customers) that use the vendors > hardware can use > the hardware in a manner befitting the quality of the > hardware's design. If you do pay enough for it then you can have nearly anything. At least thats the idea that a comercial facility does work. As there is not that much money involved in OpenSource there is a basic problem in interacting with such facilities. Other developers have expressed at some time that they got best results of responseness in cases where the money factor did not hit big into a case. This means if either it was a relatively small effort compared to the other operations or in cases where the copmany already knew that there was no chance to get any more money from a specific still alive component and so had no more reason to hide anything. One thing, you might know that companies with no longer existing business tend to behave like they are no longer existin
RE: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Sun, 20 Jul 2003, Alexander Stohr wrote: > > On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Mark Vojkovich wrote: > > > > From: Fred Heitkamp [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > If the server market is the biggest (and for Linux it is) then > > only 2D support if that is required. I'd bet even the big > > film studios don't use Linux to view the final rendering. They > > probably use a Mac (Apple OS of some kind) or a PC running > > Windows. > > It is NOT the server market, it is the grafics render farming > and the related grafics editing at the desks of the movie industry. > I honestly don't know for a fact that the server market is bigger than the movie renderfarm market. I am just speculating that it is base on casual reading of trade websites and periodicals. Just because there are more general internet using businesses than movie businesses. Servers don't need high performance 3D or 2D graphics. In fact many servers are probably not administered with a GUI at all. I don't know how many CAD/CAM applications are done using Linux either, but probably much less than Windows and Solaris/SGI. I am not trying to argue against high performance and complete ATI or Nvidia opensource drivers. I was just playing devils advocate. Linux is my favorite OS. It would be perfect for me if the graphics and multimedia capabilities were equal or better than Windows. Fred Error Loading Explorer.exe You must reinstall Windows. ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
RE: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
> On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Mark Vojkovich wrote: > > > For consumer desktop that's true. There is one potential business > > case in the professional desktop market. SGI's, HP's and Sun's old > > workstation customers have been moving over to Linux. Thats no market secret to anyone at all. You just have to browse for the leading application software vendors and then admit that any big tool in the digital content creation business is availabel in a Linux port as well. Lets say non of the PC big vendors want to miss those business and therefore would run havoc if their requirements to grafics vendors for their hardware and drivers would lack the Linux OS support. Obviousely the intel compatible PC architecture is the toy of choice. > > All the film > > studios are using Linux, for instance. The volume is small but the > > margins on the professional cards is high so there is a chance that > > it might actually make money some day. If it weren't for this > > potential in the professional market, NVIDIA probably wouldn't have > > any binary Linux drivers. The real target of those drivers is the > > NVIDIA Quadro line not the GeForce line. or alternatively an ATI FireGL board but not the ATI Radeon. its the same market situation for them so there cant be much difference. whoever looks back on the driver history can easily verify this sort of reasoning the driver bring up. > From: Fred Heitkamp [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > If the server market is the biggest (and for Linux it is) then > only 2D support if that is required. I'd bet even the big > film studios don't use Linux to view the final rendering. They > probably use a Mac (Apple OS of some kind) or a PC running > Windows. It is NOT the server market, it is the grafics render farming and the related grafics editing at the desks of the movie industry. Ehm, why should movie industry not use all in the same OS flavour when they know that it pays out for them. And admin is much luckier when anything behaves the same instead of having a multi OS installation. A department must have strong needs to convince an Admin to make such sort of an excemption, or it must cancel any calls to the IT admin if it installs that system without his explicit approval. Hey, what do you think how final film rendering is done for digial movie industry? They do have the films on some sort of fast and high volume media in order to provide a high quality result. Such digital data is best stored on SCSI-RAID systems with bus adapters that grant the needed troughput. Maybe even some two or three of 64 bit PCI adapters are needed and a RAID array with some 5 to 8 disks, each with 100 GB volume, per adapter. --> I have seen Windows administrators going mad when they just started putting a 2nd SCSI controller into the same PC. Linux simply does it and comes with RAID for no cost. Then there must be some core unit, possibly a long term established 64 bit CPU or whatever 32 bit i686 design is capable of managing the system data flow fast enough. --> I am not really aware of Windows supporting anything but the i686 at high speeds, so there is an important limit on choices. Linux supports nearly any sort of speedy CPU, so its a nice guy. Goint to grafics, there might be even enoug bus transfer performance for the good old Hercules Dynamite 128, but of course some current boards might perform better. Its just that movie creation devices might need fine tuned video modes in color depth and resolution. Possibly the adaption to 10 bits or 12 bits per component formats is simpler if the system can be freely programmed. --> Windows does not let you tweak video modes that much. Linux offers open source and lets you customize nearly anything. Such a box must use a nearly invisible system activity footprint to not intercept any of the time critical movie data streaming. Further a windowing system is not really needed whilst streaming, its enough if the framebuffer gets initialized and some sort of remote hardware control for the "image engraving" is doable. --> Windows comes with a quite heavy memory foot print and a big bunch of running threads, even when in rescue console mode. Its uncertain how viable that console is for possbily multi cpu operation or whatever feature you might need for the project. You do need a big bunch of costly tools to write Windows drivers, even if you only want to access a certain IO-Port. Linux is easily reducible to some 100 kB of kernel with only the components in there that are really urgently needed. You have quite a number of choices how to operate your grafics. If you thinkg you do want some IO-Port access, then just patch it. In the end - why setup such a machine with something you cant control whilst you have anythin you need to your hands at no cost and tested on your remaining infrastructure? Thats the considerations that are attaching to a current film rendering system project. Th
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Sat, 19 Jul 2003, Fred Heitkamp wrote: > On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Mark Vojkovich wrote: > > > On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Tim Roberts wrote: > > > > > On 18 Jul 2003 20:16:35 -0500, William Suetholz wrote: > > > > > > In business terms, the Linux market is not relevant. Sad but true. > > > > For consumer desktop that's true. There is one potential business > > case in the professional desktop market. SGI's, HP's and Sun's old > > workstation customers have been moving over to Linux. All the film > > studios are using Linux, for instance. The volume is small but the > > margins on the professional cards is high so there is a chance that > > it might actually make money some day. If it weren't for this > > potential in the professional market, NVIDIA probably wouldn't have > > any binary Linux drivers. The real target of those drivers is the > > NVIDIA Quadro line not the GeForce line. > > If the server market is the biggest (and for Linux it is) then > only 2D support if that is required. I'd bet even the big > film studios don't use Linux to view the final rendering. They > probably use a Mac (Apple OS of some kind) or a PC running > Windows. Digital context creation (DCC) for most movies is done on Linux workstations running in-house software or commercial software such as Maya, SoftImage, Shake, Houdini. Final rendering is done on server farms which are largely Linux. Post production is still done primarily on big SGI machines. That will move over to Linux when PCs go 64 bit, provided the professional X desktop environment isn't fucked up by bells and whistles by then. It's not clear if Longhorn is going to be very DCC/CAD friendly so that may prompt some minor defections from Windows to Linux. It may be that Microsoft will alienate the professional market in order to better cater to the consumer market. Unfortunately, I detect a similar willingness in the Linux community. Mark. ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On 19 Jul, Havoc Pennington wrote: > On Sat, Jul 19, 2003 at 11:52:47AM -0400, Fred Heitkamp wrote: >> If the server market is the biggest (and for Linux it is) then >> only 2D support if that is required. I'd bet even the big >> film studios don't use Linux to view the final rendering. They >> probably use a Mac (Apple OS of some kind) or a PC running >> Windows. > > The digital effects and animation studios are typically using Linux > workstations, often migrated from SGI. They have some Windows/Mac for > specific apps sometimes, and some leftover UNIX workstations > sometimes. It's not just the render farm though. > > See here for example: > http://www.movieeditor.com/pubs/gu4dec.rowe.monday.abridged.pdf > Excellent examples of how far Linux has gone in taking over movie production, but it missed a couple points: 1) Mr. Heitkamp said "view the final render". I would interpret this to mean the final film production work done on an Avid or similar system. So far, these systems remain Mac or Windows based. But Avid is hiring people with Linux experience and has released a few tools for Linux. The Linux penetration is coming. 2) This final view does not need 3D. The 3D graphics pipeline may be of interest in some of the earlier stages, but not in the final stages. And, in the earlier stages the really good rendering is not done with 3D graphics cards. You use the 3D tools for the preliminary sketches. 3) The final view needs tools that are special, and rarely available from traditional PC vendors. What you really need are very high quality display chains, preferably 12-bit resolution from frame buffer out to display (with no loss of quality or noise). You need extremely fast update and modify to the frame buffer so that you can rapidly adjust things like color balance, create psuedo-spotlights, and selectively adjust the appearance of subsections of the frame. The XFree86 2D capabilities and 2D image optimizations are actually quite relevant to these needs. They can't be used directly, but that is just because all the readily available cards are limited to 8-bits. R Horn ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Sat, Jul 19, 2003 at 11:52:47AM -0400, Fred Heitkamp wrote: > If the server market is the biggest (and for Linux it is) then > only 2D support if that is required. I'd bet even the big > film studios don't use Linux to view the final rendering. They > probably use a Mac (Apple OS of some kind) or a PC running > Windows. The digital effects and animation studios are typically using Linux workstations, often migrated from SGI. They have some Windows/Mac for specific apps sometimes, and some leftover UNIX workstations sometimes. It's not just the render farm though. See here for example: http://www.movieeditor.com/pubs/gu4dec.rowe.monday.abridged.pdf Havoc ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
Am Sam, 2003-07-19 um 17.52 schrieb Fred Heitkamp: > On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Mark Vojkovich wrote: > > On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Tim Roberts wrote: > > > On 18 Jul 2003 20:16:35 -0500, William Suetholz wrote: > > > In business terms, the Linux market is not relevant. Sad but true. > > For consumer desktop that's true. There is one potential business > > case in the professional desktop market. SGI's, HP's and Sun's old > > workstation customers have been moving over to Linux. All the film > > studios are using Linux, for instance. The volume is small but the > > margins on the professional cards is high so there is a chance that > > it might actually make money some day. If it weren't for this > > potential in the professional market, NVIDIA probably wouldn't have > > any binary Linux drivers. The real target of those drivers is the > > NVIDIA Quadro line not the GeForce line. > If the server market is the biggest (and for Linux it is) then > only 2D support if that is required. I'd bet even the big > film studios don't use Linux to view the final rendering. They > probably use a Mac (Apple OS of some kind) or a PC running > Windows. Not completely true, I'm afraid. At GUADEC this year there was a quite interesting talk by some guy who could indeed proove that many film studios replaced not only the rendering farms by Linux clusters (that was quite early) but also the quite expensive editing workstations, namely the good old SGI workstations. The calculation is clear, more value at less cost. And since they use specialised software anyway it was no problem for them to have it ported to Linux. So my impression is that in certain areas we are already moving into new niches which demand solutions that are hard to provide, like 3D rendering. The problem is that neither the hardware manufacturers nor the software developers (us) get to know these demands. You only get to know some small percentage of the decisions made but you are (mostly) not involved in the decision making process. This is mostly done by business people who are told the feature requirements. And those then go and look for those features at the lowest price. They will not subscribe to xfree86-devel mailinglist and ask for a feature. If it is not there, they simply will not buy it. And they will also not ask ATI or whoever to provide this feature. > Fred CU nils faerber -- kernel concepts Tel: +49-271-771091-12 Dreisbachstr. 24 Fax: +49-271-771091-19 D-57250 Netphen D1 : +49-170-2729106 -- ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Mark Vojkovich wrote: > On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Tim Roberts wrote: > > > On 18 Jul 2003 20:16:35 -0500, William Suetholz wrote: > > > > In business terms, the Linux market is not relevant. Sad but true. > > For consumer desktop that's true. There is one potential business > case in the professional desktop market. SGI's, HP's and Sun's old > workstation customers have been moving over to Linux. All the film > studios are using Linux, for instance. The volume is small but the > margins on the professional cards is high so there is a chance that > it might actually make money some day. If it weren't for this > potential in the professional market, NVIDIA probably wouldn't have > any binary Linux drivers. The real target of those drivers is the > NVIDIA Quadro line not the GeForce line. If the server market is the biggest (and for Linux it is) then only 2D support if that is required. I'd bet even the big film studios don't use Linux to view the final rendering. They probably use a Mac (Apple OS of some kind) or a PC running Windows. > Fred Error Loading Explorer.exe You must reinstall Windows. ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 12:25:16PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote: > No, there you are exagerating. I hardly doubt that they would go broke > or whatever if they released open source drivers. If anything, they > would sell more boards. Not very many, and their competitirs would then have access to all their IP, so could out-do them in the next generation of cards. -- Daniel Stone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.kde.org - http://www.debian.org - http://www.xwin.org "Configurability is always the best choice when it's pretty simple to implement" -- Havoc Pennington, gnome-list pgp0.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
TR> Unfortunately, "interesting" and "meaningful" are NOT among the TR> criteria used by the US Patent and Trademark Office in awarding TR> patents. The European Parliament intends to discuss in September Arlene McCarthy's bill that aims to put European patent law in step with its American counterpart. If you agree with Tim and happen to live in the EU, please do write a friendly note to your Euro-MP before September. General page on software patents in the EU (including calendar): http://swpat.ffii.org An article by McCarthy: http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0%2C3605%2C970294%2C00.html RMS' rebuttal: http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0%2C3605%2C975126%2C00.html Sorry for the offtopic post. Juliusz ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 06:09:44PM -0700, Mark Vojkovich wrote: >Ironically, the Linux desktop community doesn't target the > only potential business case there is. It's often at odds with > it. Workstation users like a platform that doesn't change and anything > that risks damaging OpenGL behavior (like RandR support or alpha > blended cursors) is generally not well accepted. I guess this thread is getting offtopic, but fwiw, from what I can see of customers and other data this battle is already won. Linux is definitively cheaper and meets the technical need for just about everyone, where UNIX workstations are hanging on it's by inertia and due to certain ISVs. There are not a lot of additional features needed to win these customers, other than continuous performance gains. For the 3D performance gains everyone is basically 100% dependent on nvidia and ATI; if you guys make the improvements they're there, otherwise they aren't. Nobody else has the ability to address this issue that I know of. People are looking beyond this market, because the workstation market simply is not the largest in the scheme of things, and isolated by itself has little reason other than a body of in-house and ISV apps to be Linux-based rather than Windows- or Mac-based. The historical reason it was UNIX-based was the high end hardware; that reason is gone. This paper has some good points: http://www.osafoundation.org/desktop-linux-overview.pdf There is substantial interest in the world today in Linux as a desktop, and enough of that interest is among potentially paying customers who understand the technical realities. For now, granted, we're talking primarily about highly managed and locked-down desktops with a restricted application set. But for whatever reason, empirically many people want to use Linux for anything it's capable of doing, as soon as it's capable of doing it. If the X-based platform is to be capable enough for the current interest in managed desktops, and the few-years-out interest in more general desktops, we have to be making progress intelligently and continuously. That's how we're getting there on the server, it's how we got the workstation market, and it's how we'll get future markets. There isn't a business case here yet for nvidia, or for desktop ISVs. However, for the organizations looking at Linux desktops today, those things aren't essential; which gives a possible way out of the chicken-and-egg/bootstrap problem. There is already a business case for many operating system vendors and hardware OEMs, judging by their publicly-announced actions over the last year. Nobody can predict the future, of course. Many things can happen. I don't believe there is a fundamental tradeoff between what all these various customers want to do, from a technical standpoint. However, to properly balance all the competing requirements, looking at the client-side GUI platform as a whole rather than as any single unit (window system, desktop shell, toolkits, applications) will be important. Fluidity and adaptation are essential, properly balanced with regular ABI-stable releases. Havoc ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Tim Roberts wrote: > On 18 Jul 2003 20:16:35 -0500, William Suetholz wrote: > > > >On the other hand.. If more people who didn't want to have to run > >another OS to access features that are not well supported because of > >lack of knowledge on how to support them would comment/complain > >(oh alright -BITCH-) maybe the hardware vendors would realize that there > >is a viable market for their devices to be used on the second class OS's > > The reality of the business end of this is just brutal. The unfortunate fact > is that your "viable market" is completely insignificant. > > ATI doesn't make money from you. ATI doesn't make money from the few tens of > thousands of Linux users out there. At their margins, that probably pays for > part of one engineer's salary. > > No, ATI makes money when IBM orders 2 million Rage chips for their next > generation laptop. If IBM made the deal conditional on ATI providing high- > quality, high-functionality XFree86 drivers, you can bet they would trip over > their shoelaces in providing that. However, they don't. IBM makes the deal > conditional on great WinXP drivers and great DX9 support, because to 3 > standard deviations, that's what its customers want. > > In business terms, the Linux market is not relevant. Sad but true. For consumer desktop that's true. There is one potential business case in the professional desktop market. SGI's, HP's and Sun's old workstation customers have been moving over to Linux. All the film studios are using Linux, for instance. The volume is small but the margins on the professional cards is high so there is a chance that it might actually make money some day. If it weren't for this potential in the professional market, NVIDIA probably wouldn't have any binary Linux drivers. The real target of those drivers is the NVIDIA Quadro line not the GeForce line. Ironically, the Linux desktop community doesn't target the only potential business case there is. It's often at odds with it. Workstation users like a platform that doesn't change and anything that risks damaging OpenGL behavior (like RandR support or alpha blended cursors) is generally not well accepted. As for the viability of a particular market, here's an example. Yahoo's business section lists NVIDIA as having 1513 employees and revenue over the last year was $1731 Million. This is revenue of over $1 Million per employee per year. That 1513 includes everybody including secretaries, etc... so there is obviously well over a Million dollars revenue per engineer. One man year of extra work is generally expected to generate at least a Million extra dollars of revenue. If a particular market can't generate that, resources are best allocated to another project. Mark. > > >I would actually be satisfied with Binary only drivers that would > >support the whole card. But, there aren't enough people letting them > >know that there is an interest (OOPS that would be BITCHING!). > > And even if EVERY person let them know there was an interest, it still > wouldn't be enough. There just aren't enough of us. > > -- > - Tim Roberts, [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc. > > > ___ > Devel mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel > ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On 18 Jul 2003 20:16:35 -0500, William Suetholz wrote: > >On the other hand.. If more people who didn't want to have to run >another OS to access features that are not well supported because of >lack of knowledge on how to support them would comment/complain >(oh alright -BITCH-) maybe the hardware vendors would realize that there >is a viable market for their devices to be used on the second class OS's The reality of the business end of this is just brutal. The unfortunate fact is that your "viable market" is completely insignificant. ATI doesn't make money from you. ATI doesn't make money from the few tens of thousands of Linux users out there. At their margins, that probably pays for part of one engineer's salary. No, ATI makes money when IBM orders 2 million Rage chips for their next generation laptop. If IBM made the deal conditional on ATI providing high- quality, high-functionality XFree86 drivers, you can bet they would trip over their shoelaces in providing that. However, they don't. IBM makes the deal conditional on great WinXP drivers and great DX9 support, because to 3 standard deviations, that's what its customers want. In business terms, the Linux market is not relevant. Sad but true. >I would actually be satisfied with Binary only drivers that would >support the whole card. But, there aren't enough people letting them >know that there is an interest (OOPS that would be BITCHING!). And even if EVERY person let them kinow there was an interest, it still wouldn't be enough. There just aren't enough of us. -- - Tim Roberts, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc. ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
Hello, Thank you all on the list for your responses.. It has been interesting. Mr. Harris, yes I am one of "Those people" who want a device to work in my chosen operating system, and have been frustrated that while things have gotten a bit better than they were in 1998, the OS and users that use it are still considered second class by the device manufactureres despite some very quiet lip service on the manufacturers part. Part of my attitude is from being involved in (mostly on the sidelines) in the initial project that grew into Gatos, and the stonewalling that was done at that time. Since that time ATI has donated hardware, and provided some documentation for the area that I am most interested in. Multimedia in case you hadn't guessed :-) I still am not able to use the DVD playback acceleration features, because the chopped that out of the docs. On Fri, 2003-07-18 at 04:57, Mike A. Harris wrote: > On 17 Jul 2003, William Suetholz wrote: > > > When are the various different patches out there for ATI cards going > >to be integrated into XFree86 and DRI? I know of at least two different > >projects that are modifying these drivers. > > I'm not sure what specific patches you're refering to, but > if you're refering to the DRI project and GATOS project, they're > not "patches". They are projects. The DRI code gets merged into > XFree86 2-3 times a year or more depending on various factors, > and happens as XFree86 development proceeds. In my paragraph above I did call them projects. I was not really thinking about DRI, however I was thinking of Gatos, and the TV-Out stuff. --SNIP-- > >What's the deal with ATI's drivers? > > The binary ones, or the open source ones? Either way, your > question isn't very clear. "What's the deal" doesn't mean a lot. > I am not aware of any open source drivers directly available from ATI. > > As for your statement "reinventing the wheel" and it's associated > implication about why ATI has produced proprietary drivers and > made them available for download, here is a clue for you. -NASTY- I'm not totally stupid. > --SNIP-- > however the drivers > are unsupported - just like any company's drivers are unsupported > on any OS platform. (Try calling any video hardware vendor on > the telephone for *any* operating system, including Microsoft > Windows and tell them your video card is crashing and you think > it is a driver bug. Watch how fast every vendor out there will > tell you that they do not provide end user support.) > Not entirely true.. I have gotten support from ATI in getting their stuff to work under NT and other MS systems. --SNIP-- > >After all their drivers don't support XV at all, so you can't > >use the multimedia capabilities of some of their integrated > >cards like the AIW-PRO and 8500DV. I realize that in the past > >they have provided some information to XFree86, and eventually > >after having their multimedia stuff reverse engineered to the > >group that was working on that. They have, however, never > >provided complete information! > > They've got the right to do that if they wish. Suffice it to say > that ATI has provided more documentation for their video hardware > than all other vendors combined, at least the docs that I have > had access to from all vendors. With people like you bitching > about it however, I don't see how that is intended to get anyone > to release any documentation or specifications that haven't been > released. They could theoretically release all documentation to > everything, open source their proprietary drivers, sell their > company and donate the money to the XFree86 project, and people > would still find something to bitch thanklessly about and > complain about some bug they find. > On the other hand.. If more people who didn't want to have to run another OS to access features that are not well supported because of lack of knowledge on how to support them would comment/complain (oh alright -BITCH-) maybe the hardware vendors would realize that there is a viable market for their devices to be used on the second class OS's And, I'm sure that ATI has a file on me :-) I've been commenting on this directly to them for some time. --SNIP-- > If I sound like the devil's advocate, I assure you I'm not. I'm > just tired of hearing random people bitch and beak off about this > type of crap who don't put any sort of thought whatsoever into > the business, legal, copyright/trademark/patent, or engineering > costs and other factors that affect these types of decisions in > companies out there. Try to look at things from the angle of the > given company out there for once. > Yes I am a random person, and, I'm a nobody who must be a pretty terrible person to want to use something other than a MS supported product to utilize the features that the card was purchased for. And, I must never (in the 5-7 years I've been asking for this) have thought about the business side
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
You're the first person I've seen in the Linux world who actually has some insight into the way this really works. Not to say that what you've said is all there is too it. It's not a simple as that, but there is certainly this aspect to it, and it's possibly the dominant one. Frank La Monica wrote an essay about companies and IP once. Lots of open source folks like to quote it, but the fact is that Frank had no idea what he was talking about. It was mostly wishful thinking passed off as fact. He missed entirely the issue you illuminated. Additionally, I can tell you that graphics hardware companies are VERY INTERESTED in what the other graphics hardware companies are doing. There are legitimate IP concerns. This is often difficult for some open source developers to understand because they've never actually been exposed to much, if any, real software IP. The open source 3D drivers, for instance, are pretty much just dumb OpenGL state machines. Mark. On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Tim Roberts wrote: > Unfortunately, "interesting" and "meaningful" are NOT among the criteria used > by the US Patent and Trademark Office in awarding patents. The fact is most > chip companies DO hold patents on some peculiar aspect of their chips, and > they have to pretend to protect them in order to maintain their usefulness. > > Most people don't realize how much the patent business has turned from being > an invention protector into one big Pokemon game. Company A decides to > attack Company B. They lay down three of their patents in the Pokemon arena > and say, "AHA!, you violate these patents, please pay me a million a year or > I'll sue." > > Company B goes back to their Pokedex, chooses three likely candidates from > THEIR patent portfolio, and responsd "AHA!, you are violating OUR patents! > Sign this cross-licensing agreement or my Charizard's flame thrower attack > will turn you to ashes." > > The two companies sign the agreement in order to avoid the court system, put > their patents back into their Pokeballs, and life goes on. They have to have > patents in order to make their Pokemon card deck strong enough to survive > battles like that. > > Of course, this is all anathema to the open source and free software > movements. > > This e-mail also demonstrates that my children have spent WAY too much time > with Pokemon. > > -- > - Tim Roberts, [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc. > > > ___ > Devel mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel > ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003 12:25:16 +0200, Sven Luther wrote: > >Maybe they could have the whole X driver and kernel module in open >source, and only keep the opengl library as proprietary stuff. I more or >less doubt they have any IP involved in these part, at least some really >meaningfull stuff. Unfortunately, "interesting" and "meaningful" are NOT among the criteria used by the US Patent and Trademark Office in awarding patents. The fact is most chip companies DO hold patents on some peculiar aspect of their chips, and they have to pretend to protect them in order to maintain their usefulness. Most people don't realize how much the patent business has turned from being an invention protector into one big Pokemon game. Company A decides to attack Company B. They lay down three of their patents in the Pokemon arena and say, "AHA!, you violate these patents, please pay me a million a year or I'll sue." Company B goes back to their Pokedex, chooses three likely candidates from THEIR patent portfolio, and responsd "AHA!, you are violating OUR patents! Sign this cross-licensing agreement or my Charizard's flame thrower attack will turn you to ashes." The two companies sign the agreement in order to avoid the court system, put their patents back into their Pokeballs, and life goes on. They have to have patents in order to make their Pokemon card deck strong enough to survive battles like that. Of course, this is all anathema to the open source and free software movements. This e-mail also demonstrates that my children have spent WAY too much time with Pokemon. -- - Tim Roberts, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc. ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
Mike A. Harris wrote: On 17 Jul 2003, William Suetholz wrote: After all their drivers don't support XV at all, so you can't use the multimedia capabilities of some of their integrated cards like the AIW-PRO and 8500DV. I realize that in the past they have provided some information to XFree86, and eventually after having their multimedia stuff reverse engineered to the group that was working on that. They have, however, never provided complete information! They've got the right to do that if they wish. Suffice it to say that ATI has provided more documentation for their video hardware than all other vendors combined, at least the docs that I have had access to from all vendors. With people like you bitching about it however, I don't see how that is intended to get anyone to release any documentation or specifications that haven't been released. They could theoretically release all documentation to everything, open source their proprietary drivers, sell their company and donate the money to the XFree86 project, and people would still find something to bitch thanklessly about and complain about some bug they find. The reality however is that we live in a capitalist society and have strict trademark/copyright/patent and trade secret laws designed to allow companies to invent/create something and then own it, either permanently, effectively permanently, or for some period of time. With this legal climate, this erects walls for open source, and they're not going to be easy walls to work around. We get what the lawyers say we can have basically, and we should be glad to get that, especially if the alternative is nothing. From an end-user's point of view, this argument doesn't cut it. The only time I use my Radeon is when I play DVDs. I shut down my computer, pull my best friends Geforce 2 MX out, blow the dust off my Radeon 64MB DDR, put it in the AGP slot, plug the SVideo cable in, power on and run mplayer. When the DVD is finished, I take my Radeon out and reboot with the Geforce back in. The fact that ATI have contributed code for a 2D driver doesn't move me. In fact I don't even use the 2D driver - the only time I run X with my Radeon I use the VESA driver for it, as it's the only way I can get tv-out working in X, but admittedly that's only when I leave my girlfriend with the computer and she wants a gui interface to mplayer with tv-out. Sure Quake works, and xscreensaver and the xmms plugins. Cool. But a majority of the games I have don't work: Tribes 2 ( crashes on startup ), Unreal Tournament 2003 ( previously required S3 Texture Compression, now has far too many rendering bugs to be able to tell what's going on) , Neverwinter Nights ( runs at 1 frame every 5 seconds - and yes I have DRI working ). While I certainly don't just sit here playing games all day, I bought my Radeon for 2 reasons, and 2D support wasn't one of them - $AUS 500 is too much for just 2D support. I wanted 3D acceleration, and multimedia ( tv in & out ). Of these, 3D acceleration doesn't work with my games, tv-out kinda-just-barely works on the console ( but I assume someone will eventually 'fix' this so it doesn't work at all ) and tv-in I believe works, ( but not if compiled with gcc-3.x. - I suppose this is fair enough ). If ATI have provided more documentation than all other hardware vendors combined then that is an interesting statistic, but it doesn't address the above end-user issues. However I have read a number of threads in the Gatos mailing list about ATI not even responding to requests for documentation for the newer Rage Theatre chips for the past *year*. Responding with a reason why the documentation is not available would be something. Not responding at all ... that's something else again. Maybe there are legal reasons. Maybe they just want to protect their IP. Whatever. Respond. It doesn't matter to end users anyway. What matters is that nVidia's cards just work, and the reason is that nVidia have made the effort to make things work. ATI have made some efforts to make some things work. The sad thing is that I would actually really like a Radeon 9800. But I would be a fool if I bought one. Previous experience tells me I'd be far better off with a GeForce - even my friend's hand-me-down GeForce 2 MX. ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Sven Luther wrote: > On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 05:57:50AM -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote: > > >What's the deal with ATI's drivers? > > > > Maybe they could have the whole X driver and kernel module in open > source, and only keep the opengl library as proprietary stuff. I more or > less doubt they have any IP involved in these part, at least some really > meaningfull stuff. This would it make much easier for user installations > too, i think. Maybe not but the companies are going to protect anything that is even remotely proprietary. It's just the nature of the beast. > > > > Why do these companies not open source their complete drivers? > > Because they have intellectual property in their drivers that > > As if their concurent where not capable of reverse engineering the > drivers. Because it takes money and manpower. They are not going to do pull engineers off of more lucrative projects to get them little if any more profit. > > I have no problem for them to go proprietary, but i would very much like > a powerpc version of said drivers. Since both of them also release > drivers for MacOSX, i guess this would not be very expensive to just > rebuild powerpc versions of them. Or for other arches too. I think this > is the cost the graphic companies have to pay for not releasing the > source code. I'm with you there. I have a Mac and many ATI products that are available come far after their PC counterparts have been released. Though I pretty much answered my concern about this above, I'd rather suspect some sort of agreement with Bill Gates to keep the cutting edge products on Windows or lose access to the Windows market (Microsoft inside information.) Conspiracy's are often more fun than reality. > > > I am not sure this is the case all over the world, and in any case it is > hardly fair. If i buy a product, i also buy the right to use it fully. I > am no lawyer, but i guess that if you where going to resort to legal > action, the judge may well see it that way in at least some of the > countries where graphic cards are used. There are implied warranties in that if you buy something that is intended to serve a purpose, like a car for instance, it will be useful for that purpose. Maybe that's the only reason video card drivers manufacturers support Linux at all. > > No, there you are exagerating. I hardly doubt that they would go broke > or whatever if they released open source drivers. If anything, they > would sell more boards. Probably not enough to make the effort worthwhile. Probably the only reason they do the FireGL drivers at all is because they already had UNIX drivers folks were willing to pay big bucks for. > > The problem is that we get what the US lawyer say we can, and not what > we may very well have the right to in other places of the world. I doubt it. Although the US was founded on the principals of people having the rights to the benefits of their inventions, i.e. patents, US law is probably evolved/derived from European law, since many US founders were Europeans. Fred Error Loading Explorer.exe You must reinstall Windows. ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Mike A. Harris wrote: > On 17 Jul 2003, William Suetholz wrote: > > If I sound like the devil's advocate, I assure you I'm not. I'm > just tired of hearing random people bitch and beak off about this > type of crap who don't put any sort of thought whatsoever into > the business, legal, copyright/trademark/patent, or engineering > costs and other factors that affect these types of decisions in > companies out there. Try to look at things from the angle of the > given company out there for once. I appreciate all the work various folks have done to move Linux along. I have used Linux since about kernel 0.99. Now for me at least Linux has become my daily OS. (I used to use OS/2 daily and Linux as my secondary OS.) Many Thanks to All! I also understand the capitalist elements you detail. I am not a hard core (meaning religious or fanatical) open source advocate. Open source just makes good sense. I could go into the various reasons why, but I won't and it's probably obvious to anyone on this list anyway. I wish some sort of compromise could be reached where the proprietary never-to-be-open-sourced bits could be made to coexist with the open bits in a timely manner. What I mean is that I don't like waiting for months and months for various hardware and features to be supported by Linux. I don't mean just with Xfree, but with other parts of Linux as well, like media players and so forth. (My goal is never to have to boot Windows for anything.) I don't know what a workable solution from a technology aspect would be. Perhaps some consistent pluggable module API or library scheme? Fred Error Loading Explorer.exe You must reinstall Windows. ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 12:44:46PM +0200, Peter Firefly Lund wrote: > On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Sven Luther wrote: > > > > Why do these companies not open source their complete drivers? > > > Because they have intellectual property in their drivers that > > > > As if their concurent where not capable of reverse engineering the > ^ > competition A, i have been searching for this word a few times already this last week, thanks. > somehow English chose another Latin word than the other Germanic languages > -- the weirdness and hodge-podge nature of English strikes again :/ > > (this is not to spite Sven - merely to rant about English and at the same > time increase the chances that an English-only speaker will understand) Well, it would also be nice if the english only speaker would maybe be a bit more open when encountering non native english with a few problems in the text. Friendly, Sven Luther ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Sven Luther wrote: > > Why do these companies not open source their complete drivers? > > Because they have intellectual property in their drivers that > > As if their concurent where not capable of reverse engineering the ^ competition somehow English chose another Latin word than the other Germanic languages -- the weirdness and hodge-podge nature of English strikes again :/ (this is not to spite Sven - merely to rant about English and at the same time increase the chances that an English-only speaker will understand) -Peter ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
Re: Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 05:57:50AM -0400, Mike A. Harris wrote: > >What's the deal with ATI's drivers? > > The binary ones, or the open source ones? Either way, your > question isn't very clear. "What's the deal" doesn't mean a lot. I think you are exagerating, it was perfectly clear what he did mean, at least from the rest of the context. > The drivers are an alternative provided which in the cases of ATI > and Nvidia at least, are based on their Windows driver code. > >From what I understand, the OpenGL code in both ATI and Nvidia's > drivers is shared with their Windows/Mac and whatever other OS's > they support. It's cross platform code they maintain for all > OS's they choose to provide drivers for. The 2D driver is > aparently not shared code, which makes sense as Windows and X > driver models differ greatly. The kernel code would be custom > code written for the given operating systems involved, and almost > certainly written for high end high paying customers in the > scientific and other high end 3D customers in the marketplace. Maybe they could have the whole X driver and kernel module in open source, and only keep the opengl library as proprietary stuff. I more or less doubt they have any IP involved in these part, at least some really meaningfull stuff. This would it make much easier for user installations too, i think. > In short, these drivers weren't written for gamers, or home > users. They were written for high end customers out there and > merely provided for download by mortals as a convenience in hopes > that people find them useful and benefit from them being there. > > Both ATI, Nvidia and any other company providing such drivers to > the communtiy, could just very well stop doing it, and instead > only include them in their high end workstation graphics hardware > CDROMS for those scientific customers. > > Why do these companies not open source their complete drivers? > Because they have intellectual property in their drivers that As if their concurent where not capable of reverse engineering the drivers. > they don't want all of their competitors to just scoop up and use > in their own drivers for free. They also likely have various > pieces of code in their drivers that they did not write and do > not own, but have licensed from a 3rd party. In short, they most > likely have legal agreements on parts of their code that they can > NOT release under open source licenses. > > By these companies contributing to open source drivers however > (ATI contributes heavily to the radeon driver, and Nvidia to the > "nv" driver), they are still contributing to the open source > community, and they are providing users with an alternative to > use that is outside of any legally binding agreements that code > might contain in their own full proprietary drivers. I have no problem for them to go proprietary, but i would very much like a powerpc version of said drivers. Since both of them also release drivers for MacOSX, i guess this would not be very expensive to just rebuild powerpc versions of them. Or for other arches too. I think this is the cost the graphic companies have to pay for not releasing the source code. > >After all their drivers don't support XV at all, so you can't > >use the multimedia capabilities of some of their integrated > >cards like the AIW-PRO and 8500DV. I realize that in the past > >they have provided some information to XFree86, and eventually > >after having their multimedia stuff reverse engineered to the > >group that was working on that. They have, however, never > >provided complete information! > > They've got the right to do that if they wish. Suffice it to say I am not sure this is the case all over the world, and in any case it is hardly fair. If i buy a product, i also buy the right to use it fully. I am no lawyer, but i guess that if you where going to resort to legal action, the judge may well see it that way in at least some of the countries where graphic cards are used. > that ATI has provided more documentation for their video hardware > than all other vendors combined, at least the docs that I have > had access to from all vendors. With people like you bitching > about it however, I don't see how that is intended to get anyone > to release any documentation or specifications that haven't been > released. They could theoretically release all documentation to > everything, open source their proprietary drivers, sell their > company and donate the money to the XFree86 project, and people > would still find something to bitch thanklessly about and > complain about some bug they find. No, there you are exagerating. I hardly doubt that they would go broke or whatever if they released open source drivers. If anything, they would sell more boards. > > I really can't see the problem with these chip designers releasing > >information so there could be drivers written that can take advantage of >
Rant (was Re: ATI Drivers.)
On 17 Jul 2003, William Suetholz wrote: > When are the various different patches out there for ATI cards going >to be integrated into XFree86 and DRI? I know of at least two different >projects that are modifying these drivers. I'm not sure what specific patches you're refering to, but if you're refering to the DRI project and GATOS project, they're not "patches". They are projects. The DRI code gets merged into XFree86 2-3 times a year or more depending on various factors, and happens as XFree86 development proceeds. The GATOS code is something which requires integrating both into the DRI project as it has DRI/DRM modifications that are required and which there are compatibility issues that need to be addressed, and it needs to be merged into XFree86 as well, and there are massive integration issues involved in order to do that as well. I believe the GATOS maintainer would like to see this happen, and I believe the DRI project and XFree86 project would also like to see it happen. It's not a simple 10 minute job however as I have investigated just how much work would need to be done to merge this everywhere and it is non-trivial. The XFree86 project, the DRI project, and the GATOS project are ran by volunteers with limited amount of spare time to work on things. The code for GATOS has largely not been merged into XFree86 because nobody has had the time to devote to doing it. So the answer to your first question is essentially "This will get merged into XFree86 and DRI, etc. when an unpaid volunteer decides that it is interesting work to work on, and has time to devote to doing so, and other things going on at the time in development wont interfere." In short "When someone has time." >What's the deal with ATI's drivers? The binary ones, or the open source ones? Either way, your question isn't very clear. "What's the deal" doesn't mean a lot. >Why couldn't they just help out with the existing drivers >instead of reinventing the wheel? They do. The majority of the code that is contributed to the XFree86 open source 2D drivers for Radeon is contributed by ATI, and most of it written by Hui Yu at ATI. Other code contributions come from the DRI project, Michel Daenzer, myself, Kevin Martin, and numerous others. ATI generally contributes the code to support 2D on all new chipsets that come out, as well as providing various bug fixes in their patch sets. Since 4.3.0 was released, ATI has contributed approximately 18 major patches to the XFree86 project for the Radeon driver in the last 4 months approximately, of which support was added for 3D on Radeon 9200, and 2D support was added for Radeon 9200/9600/9800 and the Radeon IGP mobile chipsets, and others. You may wish to check the XFree86 CHANGELOG document which shows when these changes were checked into CVS by Kevin Martin along with some patches for Radeon by other devleopers. As for your statement "reinventing the wheel" and it's associated implication about why ATI has produced proprietary drivers and made them available for download, here is a clue for you. The binary drivers which were available on ATI's website were originally designed for high end workstation FireGL video hardware. These drivers have been available for a very long time for this high end hardware. Due to increasing demands from users to add support to their binary drivers for Radeon 8500, since the chip is essentially identical programmatically to the FireGL 8800 chips, ATI eventually made some changes to the driver to allow them to be used for the Radeon 8500 as well, however the drivers are unsupported - just like any company's drivers are unsupported on any OS platform. (Try calling any video hardware vendor on the telephone for *any* operating system, including Microsoft Windows and tell them your video card is crashing and you think it is a driver bug. Watch how fast every vendor out there will tell you that they do not provide end user support.) These drivers were provided more or less as-is to people in hopes that people find them useful, which is the same reason any other video hardware company who provides proprietary drivers to users in the community. The drivers are an alternative provided which in the cases of ATI and Nvidia at least, are based on their Windows driver code. >From what I understand, the OpenGL code in both ATI and Nvidia's drivers is shared with their Windows/Mac and whatever other OS's they support. It's cross platform code they maintain for all OS's they choose to provide drivers for. The 2D driver is aparently not shared code, which makes sense as Windows and X driver models differ greatly. The kernel code would be custom code written for the given operating systems involved, and almost certainly written for high end high paying customers in the scientific and other high end 3D customers in the marketplace. In short, these drivers weren't written for gamers, or home users
