Re: Linux in a binary world... a doomsday scenario

Alan Cox
2005-12-07T23:08:47Z

On Mer, 2005-12-07 at 15:46 -0600, Chase Venters wrote:
> bad things to allowing their competitor to take a *big* lead. Hell,
> wasn't 3dfx's fall from power partially related to IP suits? Or
> did I just hear that somewhere? I don't recall.

If my memory still works correctly 3Dfx sued Nvidia and in the end
Nvidia had to buy them to solve it. Patents are a big issue in the 3D
graphics space and the 'what they can't see' approach to minimising
lawsuits has its obvious appeal.

One of the problems in this area is the big fight going on and the fact
it is not commodity. Ten random developers are not going to produce a
driver comparable to Nvidia's libGL in the same way that ten random
developers can produce as good an ATA or SCSI adapter as anyone else