On Sat, 2001-09-15 at 21:45, Frank Worsley wrote:
> As usual I have to give my 2 cents on this. :)
>
> First off all, it is very sad to hear that the whole team has been let go
> from VA Linux. I wish all of you the best luck in the future. Thanks a lot
> for all the work you have put into this!
>
> Now, I have a question ... why are the graphics companies so reluctant to
> give out specs even for the old and "obsolete" hardware such as the Mach64?
You have to understand the corporate mentality: The suits in charge of
making these decisions don't understand Linux, and those that may have
heard about it in passing may consider the free-software movement as a
threat to their IP since Steve Ballmer told them so. These people don't
write software, they sit behind a desk and play with PowerPoint and
Minesweeper. They are afraid of someone makeing an "ATI Rage whatever"
compatible video card based on chip specifications, which is simply
rediculous. (ATI is of cource, just an example here.)
Jeffrey H. Ingber (jhingber _at_ ix.netcom.com)
> I
> am not talking about ATI specifically here ...although they are a very good
> example. I can fully understand why professionals such as Gareth do not want
> to spend their time maintaining old drivers. However, writing a driver for
> the Mach64 (or improving other old drivers) is the perfect job for
> volunteers, newbies and students who want to get some hands on experience
> writing
> drivers that will be used in the real world. Is there really so much
> proprietary and secret information in the specs of old hardware that the
> companies can not make it publicly available? Just from what I have read on
> this list it seems that a lot of promising new volunteer developers come and
> go because they get frustrated that they can not easily obtain
> documentation. If ATI and other companies made the documentation for their
> older hardware public (or maybe even released the source code for the
> Windows drivers) I could see the DRI project really living up again!
>
> Now, a lot of people also say that this doesn't really matter since the
> hardware is so old that no one needs 3D acceleration for it anyway. I don't
> think that is true at all. A lot of people still use older notebooks with
> Mach64 chips and pretty much all of our Dell servers/workstations at work
> have Mach64's in them. While these older notebooks may not be able to play
> the latest and greatest games I would still greatly appreciate the ability
> to fire up an OpenGL sidescroller or shoot'em up while I'm on the road. And
> even those "simple" games will not run at satisfactory speeds using software
> rendering. It would also be sweet if I could use my workstation at work to
> play some Unreal or Q3 over the LAN ... I am pretty sure that the Rage Pro's
> could support these games at decent speeds ... right? And using a PowerEdge
> 4400 for a LAN party would be pretty damn cool too. :)
>
> Not to mention the "not-so-old" hardware like Rage128s. I have a 32mb Rage
> Fury Pro in my home machine and I am not planning on upgrading anytime soon.
> Mostly because I don't play that many games and also because this card
> performs well enough for me ... but if someone continued to improve the
> driver I could probably keep using it for even longer with some newer games.
>
> If the companies could get volunteers to maintain the old drivers for them
> that could even save them some money ... and it would be almost like free
> advertising. I certainly would buy my next graphics card from a company that
> supports volunteer development instead of going to a competitor that keeps
> all their information secret!
>
> So, can somebody answer my question ... what is so secret about the specs
> for old hardware??? And why would companies _not_ want volunteers to work on
> old drivers?
>
> - Frank
>
>
>
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