Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
Robert Huff wrote: Jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED]: nVidia, at least, is aware of the issue and has offered to write and maintain drivers ... provided certain capabilities are added to the kernel. (See previous discussion in this mailing list.) This has - obviously - not happened, and I do not know of work in progress. I do agree that the first vendor to provide working drivers will make quite a few sales. (Me among them.) Unfortunately, doing a quick search, I was not able to locate the article(s) you referenced above. I would like to see exactly what NVIDIA is requesting. Sorry - wrong list. Try: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2006-June/016995.html There's also http://wiki.freebsd.org/NvidiaFeatureRequests -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
On Thu, 2008-10-02 at 10:25 -0400, Jerry McAllister wrote: On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 06:04:24PM -0400, Jerry wrote: On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 23:25:19 +0200 (CEST) Wojciech Puchar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In all likelihood, the probability of any vendor creating FBSD specific drivers is directly proportionate to the expenditure of funds to create and maintain the driver versus the expected revenue from such an expenditure. giving out a specs will be the simplest way. Any entity, or corporation, has a right to expect a return on their investment. To expect a corporation to simply give away something, thereby depriving their shareholders, partners or whatever, of their rightfully expected monetary reward is foolish. It certainly is not a well thought out business model. First, in cases like this, giving out the specs so someone can write a good driver could increase their sales of cards which could, in turn, increase their profit.So, it would help their business rather than hurt it. They do not sell those drivers. They just use them to sell video cards.Since the lack of a driver that works in FreeBSD limits their sales of video cards, then they are making the business mistake you are indicating, only in a reverse sort of way. Second, and very important.No corporation has any right to expect a return on their investment. Investment is always a risk. They might hope for a return, but they will have to work for it. They will be fortunate to get it. More business ventures fail than succeed. Maybe it is only a case of using the wrong word, but it is still important to remember that there is no guarantee of profit. That was the big failing of price controls - that the government got in to the business of guaranteeing profits and then the whole thing fell apart. Ok, so this is in reply to the previous message on this thread as well as this one. Based on what is said here (and I agree totally), then the NDA would be only on the actually insider specs of the card- you'd have to be a savant to extrapolate the actual guts of the card solely based on the driver (in particular the special features in the hardware- if they're not public knowledge anyway). So why the big hush hush then? NDA signed and obviously a contract drawn which everyone agrees to- manufacturer and programmer. Any reason why this wouldn't work? I know of some that do this (ie m-Audio and OSS). ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 14:36:26 -0800 Henrik Hudson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wednesday 01 October 2008, Jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED] sent a missive stating: On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 23:25:19 +0200 (CEST) Wojciech Puchar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In all likelihood, the probability of any vendor creating FBSD specific drivers is directly proportionate to the expenditure of funds to create and maintain the driver versus the expected revenue from such an expenditure. giving out a specs will be the simplest way. Any entity, or corporation, has a right to expect a return on their investment. To expect a corporation to simply give away something, thereby depriving their shareholders, partners or whatever, of their rightfully expected monetary reward is foolish. It certainly is not a well thought out business model. There is a difference between open sourcing the binary blob and possibly giving away optimizations, trade secrets, etc... and allowing easier access to either hardware register specs or specs to write a wrapper around a universal blob. Personally, I think they see it as a quality control issue, though the quality of their own code is sometimes circumspect. The card companies sell hardware and this is where their money is made and/or a better experience with the software drivers. Open the hardware spec, add a support clause that any open source drivers aren't officially supported and you're good to go. Unfortunately, that is not a legally binding disclaimer in many locales. It is equivalent to wearing a T-Shirt with Touch me and I'll kill you embroidered on it. If someone touches you and you kill them you cannot then claim that they were fore warned. That is from an actual lecture I receive in a business class. Opening the hardware spec will do nothing except sell more hardware. Unproven and if it were in factually correct, more businesses would make use of it. a) the average joe will continue to buy systems with the supported hardware / drivers, most likely Windows, OS X or a major Linux distro. Probably wouldn't even know the open source ones exist. A bit naive in my personal opinion. The overwhelming majority of users that I am acquainted with and many of them are college students, buy what ever works best for them with the least amount of user intervention. The majority of users that I am familiar with do not want to spent valuable time attempting to configure a PC; they have better things to do. How many discussions have we had on this forum regarding the lack of a functional 'Flash' plug-in for web browsing, etc. Until problems like that are solved, expanding the base for FBSD is a touch uphill climb. b) the geeks of the world will start running the open source driver if it's better or not if it's worse for their applications. Either way, it will only sell more hardware. Again, unproven. c) The FOSS only crowd will start using the hardware since it has a fully open source drivers. The open source driver doesn't need to be able to run Doom5 at incredible speeds, it just needs high quality 2d and the ability to handle some 3d compositing, etc... for desktop effects. Sorry; however, I totally disagree. A half-ass driver is akin to being slightly pregnant. You are either pregnant or you are not. A driver is either fully functional, or it is broken. To make arbitrary limits on what it should and should not be able to do is absurd. If I want to play a game, and your half-ass driver will not run it, then that driver is as useless as 'Tits on a bull'. It either works, or it doesn't. Too many people today accept inferior products/performance under just the guise you are employing. My .02$ Henrik Again, it appears that NVIDIA has attempted to work with the FBSD community. Evidently, nothing has come of it. Unfortunate, to say the least. -- Jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED] Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none. Shakespeare signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
Jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Again, it appears that NVIDIA has attempted to work with the FBSD community. Evidently, nothing has come of it. Unfortunate, to say the least. The next step - sometimes suggested, but never to my knowledge attepted - would be for someone to run a collection to hire someone to do the programming. Considering we're talking about messing with the memory system, one suspects quality help would not come cheap. On the other hand, this is (as I understand it) not a FreeBSD issue; it's a (Free, Net, Open, Dragonfly)BSD issue. Trolling for interest/talent/funds in the other user bases might useful, Robert Huff ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
On Thu, 2008-10-02 at 07:26 -0400, Jerry wrote: On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 14:36:26 -0800 Henrik Hudson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wednesday 01 October 2008, Jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED] sent a missive stating: On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 23:25:19 +0200 (CEST) Wojciech Puchar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In all likelihood, the probability of any vendor creating FBSD specific drivers is directly proportionate to the expenditure of funds to create and maintain the driver versus the expected revenue from such an expenditure. giving out a specs will be the simplest way. Any entity, or corporation, has a right to expect a return on their investment. To expect a corporation to simply give away something, thereby depriving their shareholders, partners or whatever, of their rightfully expected monetary reward is foolish. It certainly is not a well thought out business model. There is a difference between open sourcing the binary blob and possibly giving away optimizations, trade secrets, etc... and allowing easier access to either hardware register specs or specs to write a wrapper around a universal blob. Personally, I think they see it as a quality control issue, though the quality of their own code is sometimes circumspect. The card companies sell hardware and this is where their money is made and/or a better experience with the software drivers. Open the hardware spec, add a support clause that any open source drivers aren't officially supported and you're good to go. Unfortunately, that is not a legally binding disclaimer in many locales. It is equivalent to wearing a T-Shirt with Touch me and I'll kill you embroidered on it. If someone touches you and you kill them you cannot then claim that they were fore warned. That is from an actual lecture I receive in a business class. Opening the hardware spec will do nothing except sell more hardware. Unproven and if it were in factually correct, more businesses would make use of it. a) the average joe will continue to buy systems with the supported hardware / drivers, most likely Windows, OS X or a major Linux distro. Probably wouldn't even know the open source ones exist. A bit naive in my personal opinion. The overwhelming majority of users that I am acquainted with and many of them are college students, buy what ever works best for them with the least amount of user intervention. The majority of users that I am familiar with do not want to spent valuable time attempting to configure a PC; they have better things to do. How many discussions have we had on this forum regarding the lack of a functional 'Flash' plug-in for web browsing, etc. Until problems like that are solved, expanding the base for FBSD is a touch uphill climb. b) the geeks of the world will start running the open source driver if it's better or not if it's worse for their applications. Either way, it will only sell more hardware. Again, unproven. c) The FOSS only crowd will start using the hardware since it has a fully open source drivers. The open source driver doesn't need to be able to run Doom5 at incredible speeds, it just needs high quality 2d and the ability to handle some 3d compositing, etc... for desktop effects. Sorry; however, I totally disagree. A half-ass driver is akin to being slightly pregnant. You are either pregnant or you are not. A driver is either fully functional, or it is broken. To make arbitrary limits on what it should and should not be able to do is absurd. If I want to play a game, and your half-ass driver will not run it, then that driver is as useless as 'Tits on a bull'. It either works, or it doesn't. Too many people today accept inferior products/performance under just the guise you are employing. My .02$ Henrik Again, it appears that NVIDIA has attempted to work with the FBSD community. Evidently, nothing has come of it. Unfortunate, to say the least. I apologise for jumping into this thread mid way, but wouldn't the problem be simply a case of nil NDA? If an FOSS programmer signed an NDA with say NVidia, then wouldn't the hardware supplier be more willing to supply more specific details? Anyone with experience in the legalities here? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
Da Rock writes: I apologise for jumping into this thread mid way, but wouldn't the problem be simply a case of nil NDA? If an FOSS programmer signed an NDA with say NVidia, then wouldn't the hardware supplier be more willing to supply more specific details? Anyone with experience in the legalities here? It's not just the legalities, it's the philosophy. Accepting the N.D.A. would allow the writing of a driver ... which would - based on what I know about siilar N.D.A.s - have to be released as a binary. Now that could happen, and be a working solution; it's worked for other products. (Examples are left as an exercise for the reader.) But it's the (rare) exception and not the rule for a reason. Ignoring philosophical disagreements, it makes it harder to find and fix problems. Case in point: FreeBSD supports Intel non-CPU hardware; in at least one case (the /em/ network driver) Intel not only writes the code (for free) but releases it under an appropriate license. This gains Intel a lot of cred. (The fact that it's superior code on a superior card doesn't hurt, nor does tha fact that the writer is available, responsive, and friendly.) Robert Huff ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 06:04:24PM -0400, Jerry wrote: On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 23:25:19 +0200 (CEST) Wojciech Puchar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In all likelihood, the probability of any vendor creating FBSD specific drivers is directly proportionate to the expenditure of funds to create and maintain the driver versus the expected revenue from such an expenditure. giving out a specs will be the simplest way. Any entity, or corporation, has a right to expect a return on their investment. To expect a corporation to simply give away something, thereby depriving their shareholders, partners or whatever, of their rightfully expected monetary reward is foolish. It certainly is not a well thought out business model. First, in cases like this, giving out the specs so someone can write a good driver could increase their sales of cards which could, in turn, increase their profit.So, it would help their business rather than hurt it. They do not sell those drivers. They just use them to sell video cards.Since the lack of a driver that works in FreeBSD limits their sales of video cards, then they are making the business mistake you are indicating, only in a reverse sort of way. Second, and very important.No corporation has any right to expect a return on their investment. Investment is always a risk. They might hope for a return, but they will have to work for it. They will be fortunate to get it. More business ventures fail than succeed. Maybe it is only a case of using the wrong word, but it is still important to remember that there is no guarantee of profit. That was the big failing of price controls - that the government got in to the business of guaranteeing profits and then the whole thing fell apart. jerryJerry McAllister[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED] If man is only a little lower than the angels, the angels should reform. Mary Wilson Little ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 02:18:10PM -0400, Mungyung Ryu wrote: Hi BSD folks! I installed FreeBSD 7 Release - amd64. I have ATI Radeon HD2600 pro VGA card but ATI is sucks for supporting driver for Linux or FreeBSD! So, I'm considering to replace the dam ATI card with NVIDIA Geforce. I don't wanna play 3D games on FreeBSD, so just cheap Geforce card would be enough, but it should support 1920x1200 resolution. I wonder if what Geforce model is supported by the FreeBSD 7R - amd64. Anybody can recommend? Have you tried using: x11-drivers/xf86-video-ati? That should build on your machine. You can use: x11-drivers/xf86-video-nv with Nvidia cards on AMD64. The supported cards are listed in the manpage: http://xorg.freedesktop.org/archive/X11R7.0/doc/html/nv.4.html Cards that will drive your resolution are mentioned in this discussion: http://fixunix.com/hardware/8213-what-video-card-support-1920x1200-dvi-resolution.html I dare say anything newish should manage it. I use the nv driver and am quite happy with it (I'm a desktop user but non-gameplayer). It's rock solid in my experience and preferable to running a blob. Second, I want to use zero-copy facility of FreeBSD. As far as I know, the hardware (NIC) support (Scatter-Gather DMA) is needed for that as well as using sendfile() api. Among the NIC products which has SGDMA function in the market, which one is the most well supported by FreeBSD 7R - amd64? I got a technical support from Intel, and they said there is no Intel NIC which supports SGDMA. That is so surprising.. isn't it? Don't know anything about this, I'm afraid :( But I suggest you search for NICs that do SGDMA then see if FreeBSD supports it by looking at an appropriate manpage (if there is a driver). The driver issue is killing me on FreeBSD. Thanks. Don't give up hope! The video should be easy to sort out, don't know about the NIC though. Regards, -- Frank Contact info: http://www.shute.org.uk/misc/contact.html ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
Hi BSD folks! I installed FreeBSD 7 Release - amd64. I have ATI Radeon HD2600 pro VGA card but ATI is sucks for supporting driver for Linux or FreeBSD! So, I'm considering to replace the dam ATI card with NVIDIA Geforce. I don't wanna play 3D games on FreeBSD, so just cheap Geforce card would be enough, but it should support 1920x1200 resolution. I wonder if what Geforce model is supported by the FreeBSD 7R - amd64. Anybody can recommend? Second, I want to use zero-copy facility of FreeBSD. As far as I know, the hardware (NIC) support (Scatter-Gather DMA) is needed for that as well as using sendfile() api. Among the NIC products which has SGDMA function in the market, which one is the most well supported by FreeBSD 7R - amd64? I got a technical support from Intel, and they said there is no Intel NIC which supports SGDMA. That is so surprising.. isn't it? The driver issue is killing me on FreeBSD. Thanks. -- ** Mungyung Ryu Ph.D. Student. College of Computing Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta ** ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2008 14:18:10 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC Hi BSD folks! I installed FreeBSD 7 Release - amd64. I have ATI Radeon HD2600 pro VGA card but ATI is sucks for supporting driver for Linux or FreeBSD! So, I'm considering to replace the dam ATI card with NVIDIA Geforce. I don't wanna play 3D games on FreeBSD, so just cheap Geforce card would be enough, but it should support 1920x1200 resolution. I wonder if what Geforce model is supported by the FreeBSD 7R - amd64. Anybody can recommend? You trying to use the ATI driver or the RadeonHD driver? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
On Wednesday 01 October 2008, Mungyung Ryu [EMAIL PROTECTED] sent a missive stating: Hi BSD folks! I installed FreeBSD 7 Release - amd64. I have ATI Radeon HD2600 pro VGA card but ATI is sucks for supporting driver for Linux or FreeBSD! So, I'm considering to replace the dam ATI card with NVIDIA Geforce. I don't wanna play 3D games on FreeBSD, so just cheap Geforce card would be enough, but it should support 1920x1200 resolution. I wonder if what Geforce model is supported by the FreeBSD 7R - amd64. Anybody can recommend? The nVidia binary drivery doesn't support amd64 if you were thinking of using that. Personally, if it's in the cards I would look for a intel board with the onboard video. The driver issue is killing me on FreeBSD. Call the vendors and tell them you want drivers. Henrik -- Henrik Hudson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- God, root, what is difference? Pitr; UF (http://www.userfriendly.org/) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
Henrik Hudson writes: The driver issue is killing me on FreeBSD. Call the vendors and tell them you want drivers. nVidia, at least, is aware of the issue and has offered to write and maintain drivers ... provided certain capabilities are added to the kernel. (See previous discussion in this mailing list.) This has - obviously - not happened, and I do not know of work in progress. I do agree that the first vendor to provide working drivers will make quite a few sales. (Me among them.) Robert Huff ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
I don't wanna play 3D games on FreeBSD, so just cheap Geforce card would be enough, but it should support 1920x1200 resolution. I wonder if what Geforce model is supported by the FreeBSD 7R - amd64. Anybody can recommend? none of them are supported on any arch. unless giving somewhat-working binary only, and x86-32 bit-only files you call a support. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 15:24:33 -0400 Robert Huff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] nVidia, at least, is aware of the issue and has offered to write and maintain drivers ... provided certain capabilities are added to the kernel. (See previous discussion in this mailing list.) This has - obviously - not happened, and I do not know of work in progress. I do agree that the first vendor to provide working drivers will make quite a few sales. (Me among them.) In all likelihood, the probability of any vendor creating FBSD specific drivers is directly proportionate to the expenditure of funds to create and maintain the driver versus the expected revenue from such an expenditure. Unfortunately, doing a quick search, I was not able to locate the article(s) you referenced above. I would like to see exactly what NVIDIA is requesting. -- Jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED] Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do. Bertrand Russell signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
In all likelihood, the probability of any vendor creating FBSD specific drivers is directly proportionate to the expenditure of funds to create and maintain the driver versus the expected revenue from such an expenditure. giving out a specs will be the simplest way. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
Jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED]: nVidia, at least, is aware of the issue and has offered to write and maintain drivers ... provided certain capabilities are added to the kernel. (See previous discussion in this mailing list.) This has - obviously - not happened, and I do not know of work in progress. I do agree that the first vendor to provide working drivers will make quite a few sales. (Me among them.) Unfortunately, doing a quick search, I was not able to locate the article(s) you referenced above. I would like to see exactly what NVIDIA is requesting. Sorry - wrong list. Try: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2006-June/016995.html Robert Huff ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
On Wednesday 01 October 2008, Jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED] sent a missive stating: On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 15:24:33 -0400 Robert Huff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [snip] nVidia, at least, is aware of the issue and has offered to write and maintain drivers ... provided certain capabilities are added to the kernel. (See previous discussion in this mailing list.) This has - obviously - not happened, and I do not know of work in progress. I do agree that the first vendor to provide working drivers will make quite a few sales. (Me among them.) In all likelihood, the probability of any vendor creating FBSD specific drivers is directly proportionate to the expenditure of funds to create and maintain the driver versus the expected revenue from such an expenditure. Unfortunately, doing a quick search, I was not able to locate the article(s) you referenced above. I would like to see exactly what NVIDIA is requesting. Digg through the nVidia forum. They've posted the specs / story there with a few links off to FreeBSD forum / lists as well. Henrik -- Henrik Hudson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- God, root, what is difference? Pitr; UF (http://www.userfriendly.org/) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 23:25:19 +0200 (CEST) Wojciech Puchar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In all likelihood, the probability of any vendor creating FBSD specific drivers is directly proportionate to the expenditure of funds to create and maintain the driver versus the expected revenue from such an expenditure. giving out a specs will be the simplest way. Any entity, or corporation, has a right to expect a return on their investment. To expect a corporation to simply give away something, thereby depriving their shareholders, partners or whatever, of their rightfully expected monetary reward is foolish. It certainly is not a well thought out business model. -- Jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED] If man is only a little lower than the angels, the angels should reform. Mary Wilson Little signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 17:52:08 -0400 Robert Huff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sorry - wrong list. Try: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2006-June/016995.html Thanks! Considering the age of the article, Thu Jun 29 11:12:35 UTC 2006, I am surprised that more has not transpired since then. It would appear that they are genuinely interested in at least attempting to get a fully functional driver in place for the FBSD architecture. -- Jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED] I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence. Samuel Johnson signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
On Wednesday 01 October 2008, Jerry [EMAIL PROTECTED] sent a missive stating: On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 23:25:19 +0200 (CEST) Wojciech Puchar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In all likelihood, the probability of any vendor creating FBSD specific drivers is directly proportionate to the expenditure of funds to create and maintain the driver versus the expected revenue from such an expenditure. giving out a specs will be the simplest way. Any entity, or corporation, has a right to expect a return on their investment. To expect a corporation to simply give away something, thereby depriving their shareholders, partners or whatever, of their rightfully expected monetary reward is foolish. It certainly is not a well thought out business model. There is a difference between open sourcing the binary blob and possibly giving away optimizations, trade secrets, etc... and allowing easier access to either hardware register specs or specs to write a wrapper around a universal blob. Personally, I think they see it as a quality control issue, though the quality of their own code is sometimes circumspect. The card companies sell hardware and this is where their money is made and/or a better experience with the software drivers. Open the hardware spec, add a support clause that any open source drivers aren't officially supported and you're good to go. Opening the hardware spec will do nothing except sell more hardware. a) the average joe will continue to buy systems with the supported hardware / drivers, most likely Windows, OS X or a major Linux distro. Probably wouldn't even know the open source ones exist. b) the geeks of the world will start running the open source driver if it's better or not if it's worse for their applications. Either way, it will only sell more hardware. c) The FOSS only crowd will start using the hardware since it has a fully open source drivers. The open source driver doesn't need to be able to run Doom5 at incredible speeds, it just needs high quality 2d and the ability to handle some 3d compositing, etc... for desktop effects. My .02$ Henrik -- Henrik Hudson [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- God, root, what is difference? Pitr; UF (http://www.userfriendly.org/) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Questions drivers for VGA and NIC
giving out a specs will be the simplest way. Any entity, or corporation, has a right to expect a return on their investment. To expect a corporation to simply give away something, quite a difference. for example - documentation about say pentium 4 assembly language and opcodes are widely available. does it help say AMD making faster processor? no. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
