Re: [RFC] Small PCI core patch

[Marc Koschewski <marc@osknowledge.org>]

* Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org> [2005-11-22 13:27:57 +1100]:

> On Tue, 2005-11-22 at 01:34 +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> > On Maw, 2005-11-22 at 11:47 +1100, Dave Airlie wrote:
> > > And funny enough unlike SCSI adapters and things for large server
> > > installations, nobody seems to really care enough about graphics
> > > cards, I've heard horror stories about how little Linux companies
> > 
> > Its easy to see why
> > 
> > The graphics market between Nvidia and ATI is extreme rivalry
> > There have been some ugly patent lawsuits
> > Good software tricks can make the weaker hardware win
> > Its very hard to write
> 
> On the other hand, there is little justification not to open source at
> least the kernel & basic mode setting part. It's all plumbing and mode
> setting stuff, monitor detection, etc... it's not part of any of the big
> added value or IP stuff that can be found in the 3D engine.
> 
> I've talked to them several times about that, trying to advocate really
> only putting the GL -> engine command stream generation in a binary blob
> (in userland where it belongs) and have everything else open sourced,
> but they aren't interested. In many cases, the replies I get are along
> the lines of "why would we do that ? nVidia doesn't" or "why could we
> care", or "give us a business justification" (the later translates to:
> prove us that by doing so, we'll sell that many more million cards,
> which is obviously impossible) etc... They really doesn't give a shit
> about what we think, and will continue to do so until they get a bit fat
> lawsuite, that is my opinion at least.

I assume they will rather completely drop development of the driver
instead of developing an OSS driver. I cannot imagine that the 'few'
people using Nvidia cards on some non-Windows systems are enough to
proceed developing the closed-source driver. Or maybe they just stop
developing the driver to hit us hard in the face! So we're left with
nothing than just some old closed-source crap. I think it's getting
even more realistic when a lawsuit is knocking on their doors. Don't you
think?

I use my Nvidia card without the Nvidia drivers for long time now. For
pure X without games and just GNOME and coding I have no need to run the
proprietary driver at all. But maybe for others (mostly for people with
laptops where you cannot simply change video cards due to a
vendor-designed form-factor) it could get worst. What is left for them?
Run non-X environments on the laptop? Even run Windows on it? Puh!

A damn stupid circumstance with Nvidia in the end... 

Marc