Re: Linux on the desktop - it's come a long way, but is it there yet?

["Ward Vandewege" <user=150@nabble.blu.org>]

 On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 09:13:57AM -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote: 
> On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 07:23:00 -0400 
> > Patent law and fear of legal exposures for releasing with Free Software drivers 
> > is a large component of the foot draggging on the part of companies to release 
> > even specs.  This is particularly true of the video cards where they think 
> > they are stepping on each others patents. 
> 
> I would tend to disagree. Most of the video chip people do not want to 
> expose their trade secrets. 

Note that this is no longer true. AMD/ATI have been releasing a *lot* of 
specs across the range of ATI cards, and free software drivers are being 
written. Intel has free software drivers for all their graphics chips except 
for the 3D functionality of the most recent Atom video chipset. This is most 
disappointing and a huge step backwards. 

The story behind this is that Intel bought that design from another vendor 
who refuses to cooperate. The fact that Intel didn't force their hand 
*before* they bought the design (i.e.  when they had a lot of leverage) says 
something about Intel's commitment to free software. Like most large 
companies, Intel is schizophrenic in that department, and the top management 
clearly does not see free software drivers as a high priority (yet?). 

Via and Sis have made some specs public/helped development of free software 
drivers, but there are gaps. Anyway; that leaves Nvidia as the lone major 
player that refuses to cooperate with free software drivers for their 
(graphics) chipsets. 

> I don't think that patent law has much to do with the decision to 
> release source drivers since competitors are certainly going to look at 
> these chips, and they can always reverse engineer the Windows drivers. 

Right. The patent story was just a pretext I think - AMD's recent actions 
show that full specs can be released if there is commitment from the top. 
It's amazing how all those 'problems' disappear when management changes its 
mind. I think we - as a community - should be a little more critical of what 
hardware vendors try to make use believe. 

Particularly so when they are trying to explain why we can't have what we 
want - full specs and/or 100% free software drivers for the hardware we spend 
lots of $$$ on. 

Thanks, 
Ward. 

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