On 30 Nov 2002, Peter Boy wrote: >> First of all, that entire post is totally and completely >> clueless, and has no technical content worthy of any more than a >> dismissive laugh. > >That might be true for someone who is familiar with the problem domain >of video drivers. The main argument of the article (as I read it beeing >not a native english speaker) is a complain about ATI's marketing policy >not to clearly and obviously differentiate between its own cards and >those build by others using their chips. But that is not true at all. That is precicely what the "Powered by ATI" logo is for. ATI does not market "Powered by ATI" products. They market and sell "Built by ATI" products. Whoever is the manufacturer of a given "Powered by ATI" board, is the one who is producing the product, and the one who is marketing that product. Once it hits pricewatch.com or somewhere however, they have no control really over how the product gets listed. In an online shopping place, or even in some computer store's marketing paraphenalia, an ATI Radeon board is most likely to be merely shown as "ATI Radeon xxxx" and no mention of powered by ATI or Built by ATI. That is DEFINITELY not ATI's fault. That is the fault of the computer store, or online dealer not labelling products adequately enough for consumers to know what precicely they are getting. There was an online company about 8 months ago or so advertising "ATI Radeon 64DDR" cards for like half the price of everywhere else. (I won't mention them as I don't want to draw people to their website and possibly generate them any business) The website showed the box of a Radeon 64DDR. However when people purchased one, they were sent a Radeon VE - a *very* different card. I know 6 people who got burned. Several of these people were so upset they said they'd never buy an ATI card again, and would go with Nvidia next time. How, I say how, did ATI have anything to do with this? It was an online computer store scam. Trying to rip people off knowingly by advertising one product and shipping another, knowing full well that many people would jump on it, and that probably only a few people would actually complain, in which case they'd exchange or refund them, and others would be upset but just deal with it. Even after they were told by telephone of their website being wrong, all they did, to try and save their ass, was add a small warning stating that "There is a high demand for this product, so your order may be substituted for a similar model card." It took 2 more weeks before they removed this phony advertising. I don't know how many people I met online who were pissed at ATI over this, although ATI had nothing to do with it. ATI very much so differentiates it's products. That is the whole point of the Built by and Powered by labeling. ATI is not responsible for how every computer store in the world presents it's wares to it's potential customers however. It is up to the consumer to make sure the computer store is not ripping them off or pulling the wool over their eyes. It is foolish to think otherwise. Also, this is no different from any other vendor. Look for Nvidia hardware. You generally more often than not, will just see "Nvidia GeForce xyz" and not "Foo Company Nvidia GeForce xyz". >ATI does not object to their OEM partners marketing strategy to >hide that fact at least as much as possible before it is really >a "lie". That makes no sense. >Red Hat would stop someone else to pull their download edition, >modify it in some way and then sell it as Red Hat Linux LE, >probably printing the "LE" in very small letters. That is a totally broken analogy in every way. "Red Hat" is a trademark of Red Hat Inc. and may only be used by the terms of the Red Hat trademark guidelines found at: http://www.redhat.com/about/corporate/trademark/guidelines.html ATI is producing video chips, and selling those video chips to other companies, and legally licensing their technology specifically so that those other companies can produce products using ATI's chips. Those companies are not making boards for ATI which ATI then markets and sells. Those companies are licensing ATI's chips and producing their own product, which they then market. ATI allows them to indicate that their product contains ATI's chips, by allowing them to use the terms "ATI Radeon xxx" which is exactly the chipset on the boards. If ATI did not do this, and the 3rd party vendor had to use ATI's chips and call them something else like "Foobedoo Foodeon" they would not likely sell many. There is name recognition both in the ATI brand name, and in the ATI Radeon product name. Those two trademarks are very large selling points, and the vendor making boards with chips they've licensed from ATI, also has been given the right to market those boards using the ATI trademarks. By allowing them to use the trademarks, ATI has made it easier for them to sell much more hardware. In order to differentiate ATI's own video cards from boards that their partners make so that consumers know wether or not they are getting a real ATI board, or a clone board, ATI has began using the terms "Built by ATI" and "Powered by ATI" to differentiate them. Vendors producing boards must use the "Powered by ATI" logo, etc. and they DO do that. Once those video cards leave the factory however, and hit the store shelves, the manufacturer is not responsible for the manner in which every computer store out there markets these products to end consumers. Computer store vendors could purposefully markwet them misleadingly, or they could just cut corners and not provide enough information to consumers. Again, please tell me how ATI is responsible for any such blunders of a computer store down the street selling you an "ATI Radeon", or an online vendor. For your analogy to be correct, some company or individual would need to come to Red Hat and legally license usage of the Red Hat trademark in order to produce their own boxed set of Red Hat Linux and *call* it Red Hat Linux. No doubt there would be various agreements on how other Red Hat trademarks may or may not be used, and whatnot. If that other vendor then sells 10000 boxes of their "Red Hat Linux 8.0 LE" version to Wal-mart, and then Wal-mart advertises on their website or in a flyer "Red Hat Linux 8.0 - $10", and you rush and purchase it online, and end up getting "Red Hat Linux LE", you are going to be quite upset likely. If you then call Red Hat for technical assistance or to complain, in theory you'll be told "you'll need to contact Foobedoo for inquiries about Red Hat Linux LE because it is their product, not ours, we merely license them to produce a product based on Red Hat Linux and use our trademark." And just like ATI supports the Powered by ATI cards (even in their Linux drivers now if you're following all posts in the thread), even though Red Hat would not likely support this clone product they've authorized, we would likely get bug reports in bugzilla, and since they likely would affect our own official version, we most likely would address those issues as if they'd been reported against Red Hat Linux in the first place. A good example of exactly this, is Red Hat Linux 7.2 for Alpha. That is only available from Hewlett Packard, and only downloadable from HP's website/ftpsite. HP provides support for the product, as well as erratum. However, I have had people report bugs in bugzilla for this, and I have fixed them too. I also have talked with HP about some issues with it, and have helped out a few HP people with resolving bugs in X on Alpha. *That* is a much more accurate analogy. >And the authors final advice is: those who are not video card / >drivers technical experts or hobbiist for flashing bios chips >should either buy definitely the original ATI cards (provided >that they are able to identify their purchase without doubt) or >avoid ATI build hardware at all, because it is too much work to >find a working one among all of those which are named ATI (and a >high risk of failing). And there are a lot of other vendors who >make it easier for their customers to clearly identify and buy a >video card that will work in a Linux system. > >For those of us who can not afford to spend a lot of time in >carefully investigating which kind of ATI an advertisment or >online shop is referencing to, that is a solid and fail safe >advice. I disagree completely. Pick any other video card vendor who also licenses their chips to others to produce boards. What specific brand of "Nvidia GeForce 3 MX" is it that you're getting when you order it? Did Nvidia make it? Who did? Did you check? What about other vendors products? What about other peripherals? Again, put the blame on the real problem - the computer store false advertising. If you ordered a real ATI Radeon, and got a Powered by Radeon, that is either your fault for not specifying or asking, or it is false advertising by the computer store. It is your responsibility to return the product for the product that you really ordered, or to complain to the computer store. If you keep the product, then you accept your purchase. In this case, the board vendor does not have drivers for Linux, and the chip vendors drivers did not work on the clone board. Not once did anyone contact the vendor who shipped the product to them, nor did they contact the vendor who produced the board to ask about support for Linux, nor did they contact ATI to inquire about support. However, you'll notice that within one single day of this occuring, ATI responded very quickly and politely by updating their drivers on their website to also now support "Powered by ATI" support. Now *THAT* is what *I* call damned dedicated customer support. It wasn't even 48 hours. Considering Linux is somewhat of a niche market, a hardware vendor response like that in such short notice is just amazing. How many other vendors would respond to their customers like that in such incredibly short time, especially to support a product that they did not actually produce, but just licenced the technology so that someone else could produce a product? I don't know about others, but if I didn't have a mountain of video cards already, and I was in the market for one, I know exactly where my money would be going. It'd be going to a company that supports Linux very well, both with open source support including major source code contributions, friendly engineers to help with problems, and access to technical specifications to XFree86 developers, as well as now supporting customers with an alternative - binary drivers, and with 2 day response times to customer concerns. Spend your money wherever you think you'll get the best support for Linux. My money would be going to ATI, and I'll bet many others who have followed this thread will be also. Once again, hats off to ATI for their support of the Linux community. $0.02 -- Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris OS Systems Engineer XFree86 maintainer Red Hat Inc. -- Psyche-list mailing list Psyche-list@redhat.com https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/psyche-list
