AMD to open up graphics specs

[Gian Paolo Mureddu]

Rahul Sundaram escribió:
> Hi
>
>
> Free software is winning. With the existing excellent support from 
> Intel and the upcoming AMD support, Nvidia will be left as the odd ball.
>
> http://lwn.net/Articles/248227/
>
> "A quick report from the kernel summit: AMD's representative at the 
> summit has announced that the company has made a decision to enable 
> the development of open source drivers for all of its (ATI) graphics 
> processors from the R500 going forward. There will be specifications 
> available and a skeleton driver as well; a free 2D driver is 
> anticipated by the end of the year. The rest will have to be written; 
> freeing of the existing binary-only driver is not in the cards, and 
> "that is better for everybody." Things are looking good on this front. 
> More in the kernel summit report to come."
>
> Rahul
>
These are EXCELLENT news!!! What would be swell is if they could at 
least completely open their DRM code to be directly in the kernel and, 
at their choice, still offer a closed, proprietary X11 driver (if they 
are restricted to offer some parts of the technology due to third party 
agreements and NDAs, such as S3TC support and other parts of their 
technology), but still use the same kernel interface as the Open Source 
drivers, which means at least part of their drivers will be delivered 
with each and every kernel update!... AMD at last is coming along and 
"doing the right thing". I'd wish they could open up the entirety of the 
drivers, but I know that's not very likely due to the amount of 
technology licensed from third parties, but at least they could open up 
most of it.