Shawn Walker wrote:
> On 29/06/07, Alberto Ruiz <aruiz at gnome.org> wrote:
>> 2007/6/30, Alan Coopersmith <alan.coopersmith at sun.com>:
>> > Alan Coopersmith wrote:
>> > > So, now that I've bored everyone to sleep, this leaves us with these
>> > > possibilities for Indiana on SPARC:
>> > >
>> > > 1) Ship Xsun binaries & existing SPARC Xsun driver binaries (all
>> closed
>> > > source)
>> > >
>> > > 2) Ship Xorg & use Martux's SPARC graphics drivers (all open source)
>> > > with existing SPARC kernel driver binaries (all closed source)
>> >
>> > There is also a third choice I forgot to mention, probably since it's
>> > the least desirable of all:
>> >
>> > 3) Ship Xorg with only the drivers provided by SPARC graphics (of
>> which
>> > only XVR-2500 is likely to be done by your October proposed
>> timeline),
>> > and leave those with older SPARCs unable to run X in Indiana.
>> >
>> > Also, Garrett reminded me of another issue in a message to
>> ogb-discuss [1]
>> > - my prior description only covered 2D graphics, and ignored
>> OpenGL. For
>> > OpenGL, a similar choice will have to be made:
>> >
>> > 1) Ship existing SPARC OpenGL, with accelerated modules for existing
>> > SPARC graphics cards (closed source - and I don't know if it's
>> > redistributable) - with Xsun, this has acceleration for most of
>> the
>> > mid-to-high end SPARC graphics cards, with Xorg, only XVR-2500 is
>> > known to have usable hardware acceleration - I don't know if the
>> > others will easily work with Xorg or not once the framework is in
>> place.
>> >
>> > 2) Ship open source Mesa OpenGL, as we do on x86 (and virtually all
>> other
>> > open source OS'es do), accepting that we'll have no hardware
>> acceleration
>> > and break compatibility with existing SPARC OpenGL applications
>>
>>
>> I think that keeping the opensource flag on indiana is more important.
>> However, (as pointed in a recent mail in other thread), we can focus
>> on make
>> the retrieving through internet of those binary bits rocking easy
>> after live
>> session or install. Does this idea make sense?
>
> More important than giving users fully working hardware out of the
> box? That doesn't seem reasonable. Users don't care about "open
> source," they care about supported, working hardware.
>
> If the "open" option is fully functional and supported, sure, it can
> be used in place of the other. But as long as there is a better,
> redistributable option, that's the one we should be using to give the
> user the best experience possible "out-of-the-box."
I concur. I think Sun (SPARC graphics) really needs to step up to the
plate here.
-- Garrett
