Re: If ATI and nVidia don't support their own products, who does?
On Sun, 03 Oct 2004 19:32:37 -0700, Paul Johnson
<baloo@ursine.dyndns.org> wrote:
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> Wim De Smet <kromagg@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > You're looking at it wrong. Nobody really wants them to open source
> > their driver. Okay maybe because it's easier. But people really want
> > to be able to write their own driver.
>
> And they can still do that, nobody's stopping them. All we (at least
> RMS and Iare in the same boat, and likely thousands of others) ask is
> that we get those drivers under a license that meets the DFSG and
> doesn't make us run through tons of extra hoops and user-hostile
> licensing.
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. The whole reason that
there are no free drivers is that it is enormously difficult to
reverse engineer a display driver. 2D might very well be doable but it
takes some effort and you will probably never get the same speed a
nvidia engineer could (since he knows what is in the hardware).
Getting 3D to work (and work fast) is even harder and the same
restrictions apply. All we should ask is the information we need about
the hardware. But nVidia is afraid that this might give too much of an
insight into their techniques to ATI, and vice versa. There is a core
of truth in that.
greets,
Wim
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