Re: nVidia-PPC-Linux drivers
On Fre, 2003-05-02 at 21:36, Julian Scheel wrote:
> Am Freitag, 02.05.03, um 21:23 Uhr (Europe/Berlin) schrieb Orion
> Buckminster Montoya:
>
> >> I have to say, that I can understand this, because the specs, which
> >> are
> >> needed to develop drivers are that detailed, that another company
> >> could
> >> get detailed informations about how the chips work form this specs and
> >> adapt them to their own developments.
I very much doubt that. The docs describe how to program the chip, not
how it's implemented. And even if it was possible to deduce that, it
would be much too late to be competitive.
> > I know this is the fear, but as far as I know it rarely happens in
> > practice. Has anyone ever done this on a large scale?
>
> The only graphics-chipset manufacturer who releases the specs of it's
> chips is afaik ATI, and they only release the specs of outdated
> chipsets,
That's not true.
> because they are also worried about the technological infos
> in the specs.
I rather suspect the parts they really don't release are due to legal
issues.
> >> I'm really angry about people who say that everything has to be
> >> free, else it's bad. You have to recognize that opensource isn't a
> >> good solution for everything and everyone. Sometimes it is not a
> >> well idea to use opensource-licensing for software.
Well, if you don't care about freedom, why don't you simply use a
proprietary OS, where you don't have to worry about driver support?
*shrug*
--
Earthling Michel Dänzer \ Debian (powerpc), XFree86 and DRI developer
Software libre enthusiast \ http://svcs.affero.net/rm.php?r=daenzer
Reply to: