Re: ATI video comes out of the closet

[alan <alan clueserver org>]

On Thu, 6 Sep 2007, Bruce Byfield wrote:

> On Thu, 2007-06-09 at 16:55 -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
>
> > While good, it's still not as good as having proper open-source drivers
> > supported by the manufacturer as well as the community.
> >
> > The Noveau driver project faces the same unfortunate situation with Nvidia as
> > the OpenOffice folks do when reverse-engineering the MS doc format:  there is
> > nothing stopping Nvidia from making a few "improvements" that will break the
> > Noveau drivers more-or-less at will.
>
> Counterpoint: The community is more strongly motivated to keep the
> drivers current than the manufacturer. And, given the FOSS community's
> strong record with reverse-engineering, I doubt that Nvidia will keep
> ahead of Nouveau for any length of time once the basic drivers are done.

Depends.  For basic operation, yes.  But there are a couple of patented 
bits in OpenGL that nVIDIA supports.  Is Nouveau going to support those as 
well?  I don't know how many apps depend on those pieces, but it could be 
an issue depending on what fails to work.

Personally I have a bit problem with patents incorporated into standards. 
Please insert screaming rant here.

--
Refrigerator Rule #1: If you don't remember when you bought it, Don't eat it.