Closed vs. open development methods (Was DVI output, ATI or nVidia)

[Lonni J Friedman]

On 6/27/07, Walter Garcia-Fontes <walter.garcia at upf.edu> wrote:
> * Jonathan Dieter [27/06/07 17:23]:
> > On Wed, 2007-06-27 at 07:34 -0700, Lonni J Friedman wrote:
> > > On 6/27/07, Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak <mjc at avtechpulse.com> wrote:
> > <snip>
> > > > Is it good that the kernel bugzilla says "NO BINARY MODULES or other
> > > > tainted kernels. Do not file bugs here if you have any binary kernel
> > > > modules loaded, reproduce without that module first. NVIDIA users - THIS
> > > > MEANS YOU!"?
> > > >
> > > > In what way is the closed nvidia code and process better than being
> > > > open? How does that benefit users?
> > >
> > > I never claimed that it was better.  I just said that its certainly no
> > > worse.  No one here has yet to provide any concrete evidence to prove
> > > otherwise.
> > >
>
> It also escapes to me completely why a hardware producer would like to
> have close-source drivers, since it does not sell software but
> hardware. What does it gain? If the driver was open code, would it
> loose any revenues? Is it giving any information to competing hardware
> producers?

I think you've answered your own questions.