[PLUG] A bit confused about 2.6 kernel and X drivers

Ned Flanders plug_0 at robinson-west.com
Fri Jun 4 13:23:01 UTC 2004


Brian Beattie wrote:

>On Fri, 2004-06-04 at 11:26, AthlonRob wrote:
>  
>
>>On Friday 04 June 2004 08:08 am, Brian Beattie wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>Why is this not a problem for ATI?  I don't buy it for one second.
>>>      
>>>
>>I haven't looked at ATi cards for quite some time... but when last I did, 
>>their drivers worked similarly to nVidia's... a chunk of binary-only and a 
>>chunk of code to make that binary stuff work.
>>
>>Are their drivers fully opensource now?
>>    
>>
>
>All I know, is that the video cards I have used over the years, have all
>been supported by X, no kernel modules have been needed.  But of course
>I'm not a l337 gamer.  I do not believe that patents are the real reason
>that Nvida refuses to provide the information needed for drivers to be
>written, unless they really are violating somebodies valid patent.  I
>think they a just paranoid and afraid that is anybody actually saw their
>design they would laugh.  I see it all the time companies are so
>convinced that they have some magic jewel of a technique that gives them
>a leg up on everybody else, and they are almost always wrong.  In every
>case, it would be easier to implement the functionality from scratch,
>based on public knowledge, that it would be to aquire the magic jewels.
>
>  
>
>>Rob
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>PLUG mailing list
>>PLUG at lists.pdxlinux.org
>>http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
>>    
>>
Who is working to convince companies that there's an advantage to producing
publicly designed hardware?  What research has been done on this approach to
demonstrate that a given company won't go bankrupt or fail to produce a
superior product?  It's fun to poke at companies that keep secrets, but do
companies have any other option?  Proprietary hardware wouldn't be such
a big problem if there was proprietary hardware designed to work with Linux
and X.





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