On Fri, 22 Nov 2002, Dave Reed wrote: >Yes, I made certain my Radeon 7500 was "built by ATI" when I >bought it. Does anyone know if the open source developers plan >to continue developing drivers for the new cards even those >these binary drivers will be out there? Do open source developers develop open source kernel drivers even though binary only kernel drivers may be available for the given hardware? Yes, of course. Why? Because of the benefits that open source provides. >Is ATI at least still releasing specs for their new cards so >drivers can be written (that's the reason I switched from NVidia >to ATI - I want to be able to upgrade my machine to the newer >Red Hat versions w/o worrying about the driver not working with >them). I have not personally contacted ATI to get their latest specs for the 9x00 boards yet - mostly because I haven't needed the specs yet. I generally do not acquire docs for stuff until I need it, so I can't answer that question. My assumption is that docs are available as they always have been in the past. >If open source drivers are being written, I can be assured that >evenutally I can make that upgrade w/o losing the use of my >graphics card. It is impossible for anyone to answer that question. Until something exists, anything is nothing more than speculation. >If they're still releasing the specs and people are still >writing the drivers, I can live with buying a new card from ATI, >but if they've quit releasing their specs or there are no plans >for open source drivers, then there's no "moral" reason to buy >ATI and I'd look more closely at price, performance, etc. of ATI >vs. NVidia. ATI has not stopped supporting the open source community, and I see no reason why they would stop doing so. As I mentioned in a previous email, ATI contributed 2 large patches to XFree86.org this week (I receive all patch submissions automatically) implementing improved support, support for new hardware, and numerous other things. The biggest problem open source faces, is that 3D drivers are large, complex beasts, and take a LOT of time to develop. Writing 3D drivers requires a large range of skills, and understanding of kernel device driver programming, 3D hardware, OpenGL, Mesa, as well as XFree86 itself, and of 2D driver authoring. It is a large complex task, and takes a lot of dedicated time and effort to complete a driver. Anyone doing this on their spare time as a volunteer, is likely to take quite a long time to do it, and adding more developers only helps to a certain degree. (See Brooks law). Most of the work is work that needs to be completed serially, and so it doesn't lend well to parallel development by many people. As such, it makes sense if an open source project to support a given card is started 6-8 months *after* the card hits the market, and is done by unfunded volunteers who have a real fulltime job doing something else, it is going to take a long time until we see support. And for the case of one of the vendors open sourcing their drivers, they have different reasons for not doing so, some are quite valid, and others are less valid. Some reasons a given random hardware (of any hardware) or software vendor might not open source their code: 1) It may contain code they've licensed from some other company, and they may not have the right to open source it. Or it might contain patented algorithms, etc. that they have licenced from some other company and do not have the right to redistribute the soource. 2) It may possibly contain patented intellectual property that they own, or even unpatented techniques, trade secrets, etc. and they do not want their competition to learn how it works, and then improve their own drivers. 3) When a company open sources a driver, or any source code at all for that matter, they now run the risk that they may have infringed some patent UNKNOWINGLY in the code, and nobody ever knew, neither them, nor the person who's patent they might have infringed upon. An example being 2 completely different companies both inventing the same idea independantly without knowing it, and one of them patenting it. If the source code is released, the owner of the patent might end up reading the code and finding their patent used and suing the other company - even though no patent was knowingly violated by the other party. This is a very very SAD state of the patent system, but it is a fact of life. 4) It is possible that a vendor has knowingly and purposefully infringed upon some patent, and simply does not want anyone to know abut it, as they could get sued. They simply wont ever release their code period. 5) Their source code might be extremely hideous spagetti, and releasing it could be a major embarassment to them, in particular if paying customers see it. This could be a major black eye to the company for trying to do something good. 6) Their code might do really really evil kernel hacks that sacrifice stability for speed, or other nastiness, and they do not want anyone to know about. 7) Their code might violate the DMCA if open sourced (think of disabling copy protection on your TVout). There are many other possible reasons. I'm not trying to play devils advocate or anything, or justify why a company might not want to release their code as open source. I'm just trying to illustrate some of the reasons why a given company might decide not to open source. In the end, before a company open sources something, they are going to want to see what THEY get out of it. How does it benefit THEM, and their STOCKHOLDERS(TM). One could argue that by open sourcing one's drivers, the competition might be able to improve their own closed drivers, and that could possibly affect sales, and thus their stock price. So, it is not always a simple decision for a company to make on open sourcing their stuff. Do I personally want to see open source drivers? You bet! And I like many, want to see open source drivers, software, etc. regardless of all the other things, however - I do understand that a company may have some very good reasons for not doing so, and ultimately - they don't _owe_ us anything. It is up to us, the open source community, to both convince hardware vendors that open sourcing their drivers is good, and to show them how THEY will benefit. We can show them how WE benefit, but should they care? If we show them how THEY benefit, and allay any fears they may have, then it might be possible. However, the above points on patents ALWAYS will get in the way, as long as the United States, and some other countries have the stupid patent system and allow software patents to exist. -- Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris OS Systems Engineer XFree86 maintainer Red Hat Inc. _______________________________________________ xfree86-list mailing list xfree86-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/xfree86-list IRC: #xfree86 on irc.redhat.com
