Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and bling (Linux.com)

Posted Nov 16, 2006 6:10 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

The programmers that work on current open source drivers for things like the reverse engineered Free-software R300 drivers are _GOOD_ freaking developers. They positively kick-ass.

Think about it.. These guys are working under terrible conditions. No documentation. The manufacturer of the hardware is not only indifferent they are, at times, seem actively opposed to open source drivers. No documentation, no developer resources, no communication with engineers, no nothing, no help, no 'here is a patch to fix your problem'. Nothing. Nada.

And yet they are ablet to turn out drivers that, despite being slow, are more stable and just plain better then the drivers provided by 90% of the hardware manufacturers whose development teams have the benifit of having the guyd that designed the board down the hallway. (more or less)

Imagine how well it will work out if these guys don't have to reverse engineer anything, but have the benifit of manufacturer's assistance in understanding how the cards work?

Nvidia says: 'It's so hard to write a graphics driver that open-sourcing it would not help'.

Well then just strip their developers of everything that they use in their day-to-day jobs, hand them a PC, a debian install cdrom, 10 dollars for a budget, a black-box peice of hardware which they have no idea how it works and then tell them to make 3d drivers for it. Lets see how far they get with that.

I know that with open source developers we get pretty decent drivers. If that doesn't proof that open source driver developers are capable enough to make drivers, then I don't know what will.