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AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves.AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves.Posted Aug 10, 2006 3:16 UTC (Thu) by jhardin (guest, #3297)In reply to: AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves. by drag Parent article: Free Intel i965 graphics drivers released
> " ... If AMDs graphics cards were the only ones with open device drivers, it might affect a buying decision or two."
Well, I guess they missed the boat on *that* one...
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AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves. Posted Aug 10, 2006 5:21 UTC (Thu) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] Remember in 1998 when Informix ported to Linux, then Oracle announced a port to Linux, then all proprietary databases except one just started running on Linux? This could be like that -- the breaking of the dam.
NVIDIA and ATI haven't open sourced because they strongly suspect they're infringing various patents and having a driver out in source code form makes it easier for the other side to sue them. With Intel and its huge patent portfolio taking the first step, now they don't have to be the ones to take the risk first.
AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves. Posted Aug 10, 2006 14:22 UTC (Thu) by shane (subscriber, #3335) [Link] Some differences:
Mind you, I fully support vendors supporting their products in Linux, and in fact asked my company to get laptops with the Intel graphics chipset instead of ATI because of Intel's support for open software. Mind you, this was only 3 laptops, but it's something. :)
AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves. Posted Aug 10, 2006 14:33 UTC (Thu) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link] Keep in mind that ATI and NVIDIA already _have_ Linux drivers. They'rejust not open source. That technically means that they own at least a substantial portion of the copyright, and could decide to open up at least those parts any day they wanted to.
Hell, if nothing else, they could at least release their _hardware
BTW, NVIDIA, it's very offensive when your public relations people tell
AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves. Posted Aug 10, 2006 22:09 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] That's pretty odd.. Nvidia and ATI and such already ahve drivers.
The Nvidia binary driver, at it's core, IS the Windows driver. It's the same code as far as anybody can tell.
And their OpenGL stack is probably the same as used in Windows.
Everybody and their mom already supports 3d graphics in Linux because in high-end 3d visualization and animation workstations Linux is 'were it's at'. This is due to a veriaty of reasons, but just remember that when you watch a movie on the big screen and if it has fancy 3d graphics it was probably designed and rendered on Linux machines. The compositions of the scenes and edits on the images are probably done on Linux machines also.
Of course it's a complete propriatory system using propriatory programs and a lot of in-house code, but basicly it's all done using Linux systems.
The problem with the state of 3d graphics in Linux is that none of these companies support Linux properly. No open source 3d graphics.
And people are even willing to pay lots of money for them.
For instance you have the Wildcat line of workstation cards. In Linux the cards themselves cost several hundred dollars, but also the DRIVERS cost several hundred dollars. And they are not paticularly good drivers either.
.... HOWEVER ....
There is a lot of proccessing power in them-there graphics cards. I would expect that high end 3d graphics and scientific computing people would LOVE to get their hands on that and use it in ways that OpenGL doesn't allow.
If you get ATI to open source their drivers then this means that all of a sudden this makes their cards very very desirable.
One of the major reasons high-end people like Movies studios choose Linux over Windows or OS X for a lot of things is that they can do special stuff with the kernel and other useland stuff in isolation. They don't have to share the source code or go into negotiations with some propriatory company or anything like that.
So it would be the same for the drivers. These people would choose ATI not because they want the freedom for freedom sakes, but that they can use the freedom for their own benifit. (which is ultimately the point of all this)
AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves. Posted Aug 10, 2006 22:24 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Oh, and just in case you dont' beleive me..
Look at things like this:
"Disney Animation will be at SIGGRAPH 2006 Boston from August 1st through
PIXAR was at the USENIX 2006 confrence
They used Linux because it was the best aviable, but it still sucks.
They are looking for improvements in debugging tools (basicly gdb is god-awful in their opinion) and such and are willing to pay people to help make it happen.
Anybody want to be paid to advance the state-of-art in Linux debugging tools? :-)
AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves. Posted Aug 23, 2006 12:45 UTC (Wed) by csamuel (✭ supporter ✭, #2624) [Link] There is a lot of proccessing power in them-there graphics cards. I would expect that high end 3d graphics and scientific computing people would LOVE to get their hands on that and use it in ways that OpenGL doesn't allow. Erm, you mean like this ? Personally I'd love to know whether these things do double precision floating point or whether they're just single precision cards..
AMD maybe considuring releasing open source drivers themselves. Posted Aug 10, 2006 15:32 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] Well, I guess they missed the boat on *that* one...I don't think so. I bought a PCIe DVI video card recently. The choice was essentially ATI, nVidia and some obscure chipsets. The choice was pretty much obvious.
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