Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: [RFC] Small PCI core patch | From | Benjamin Herrenschmidt <> | Date | Tue, 22 Nov 2005 13:27:57 +1100 |
| |
On Tue, 2005-11-22 at 01:34 +0000, Alan Cox wrote: > On Maw, 2005-11-22 at 11:47 +1100, Dave Airlie wrote: > > And funny enough unlike SCSI adapters and things for large server > > installations, nobody seems to really care enough about graphics > > cards, I've heard horror stories about how little Linux companies > > Its easy to see why > > The graphics market between Nvidia and ATI is extreme rivalry > There have been some ugly patent lawsuits > Good software tricks can make the weaker hardware win > Its very hard to write
On the other hand, there is little justification not to open source at least the kernel & basic mode setting part. It's all plumbing and mode setting stuff, monitor detection, etc... it's not part of any of the big added value or IP stuff that can be found in the 3D engine.
I've talked to them several times about that, trying to advocate really only putting the GL -> engine command stream generation in a binary blob (in userland where it belongs) and have everything else open sourced, but they aren't interested. In many cases, the replies I get are along the lines of "why would we do that ? nVidia doesn't" or "why could we care", or "give us a business justification" (the later translates to: prove us that by doing so, we'll sell that many more million cards, which is obviously impossible) etc... They really doesn't give a shit about what we think, and will continue to do so until they get a bit fat lawsuite, that is my opinion at least.
Ben.
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |