Why they won't put out free drivers.
Posted Apr 25, 2006 20:14 UTC (Tue) by
landley (guest, #6789)
Parent article:
Some notes on Linux and free drivers
According to the people I knew in Austin who worked in graphics companies,
Every graphics company out there is infringing on a dozen patents from
every other graphics company. It's almost as hard to make a 3d card
without infringing on random patents as it is to write a "hello world"
program without doing so.
But if the card is a sealed black box, how can they prove infringement?
They're terrified that if they open source the driver, their competitors
will use it as evidence of patent infringement in the card, and they won't
be able to respond because the competitor's stuff is still a black box
within which they can't show the corresponding patent infringements.
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