Re: [RFC] Small PCI core patch

Jesper Juhl
2005-11-23T15:46:07Z

On 11/22/05, Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 22, 2005 at 03:11:52PM +1100, Neil Brown wrote:
> > On Monday November 21, jonsmirl@gmail.com wrote:
> > >
> > > 2) Temporarily accept the ugly drivers. Let desktop development
> > > continue. Work hard on getting the vendors to see the light and go
> > > open source.
> >
> > I doubt they will see 'the light' for many years without dollar signs
> > attached.
> >
> > A question worth asking is: Who needs whom? Do we (FLOSS community)
> > need them (Graphics hardware manufactures) or do they need us?
> > Despite growth in Linux on Desktops, I think we need them a lot more
> > than they need us.
> >...
> > Who is going to pay these people to do this work? If you agree with
> > the analysis of 'who needs whom', the logical answer is 'us'.
> >
> > Maybe we need a small consortium of companies with vested interest in
> > OSS each ponying up half a million, and use this to employ two teams
> > of graphics experts, one of which works within NVidia, and one within
> > ATI. I suspect the two companies could be convinced to take on some
> > free engineering support, if it was presented the right way.
> >...
>
> There might be a different way that could work if _many_ Linux-related
> companies participate:
>
> Find a graphics card vendor who wants to offer a cheap graphics card
> while offering full specs and write an open source driver for this card.
>

Or throw resources behind the OpenGraphics project (
http://www.opengraphics.org/ ). Help them out with the hardware specs,
help out with the code. Then when the hardware finally arrives, help
out by buying and using that hardware.
That'll give you a fully Open Source supported graphics card.

> Then start the PR campaign, e.g. press releases and free prominent
> notices at the SuSE main page "SuSE recommends ...".
>
> Yes, this would require a significant joint effort.
>
> But if successful, it might convince at least one of the two big
> graphics cards vendors that there's an (although relatively small) part
> of the market they are missing.
>

--
Jesper Juhl <jesper.juhl@gmail.com>
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