RadeonHD Driver Takes A Blow In Novell Layoffs

[Redeeman]

I would hope that hardware isnt a factor in him discontinuing development - as have already been mentioned, i doubt it would be a problem to get hardware donations - i would personally gladly contribute some hardware or money to buy the hardware, should he decide to keep developing.

[monraaf]

Sad, but I'm sure he'll find another job.

What I don't get is what the Novell developers are actually contributing to RadeonHD. I've been tracking the progress of RadeonHD for a couple of months now, and to me it looks like 99% of the code has been written by Alex Deucher.

[Chewi]

Ouch. I had a feeling something like this might happen. Thanks for your hard work, Luc.

[bugmenot]

Oh my god. Now it's getting even harder for radeonhd to exist parallel to radeon. Thanks for your great work in so many projects! Hope you find a new job soon.

[Arch64]

I hope he goes to help xf86-video-ati in their r600-r700 code.

[grantek]

Yeah, hopefully one of the big OSS companies will pick him up, or if he wants a direction change in his career, hopefully he'll still be around to advise/mentor new devs

[cruiseoveride]

well it was fun to watch the radeonhd driver get this far

[Saist]

I'm not sure the story is "over" for the RadeonHD driver. The information used by the developers is still available, and unless things have changed where AMD's not releasing any more information (a job headed internally by Mr. Bridgman I believe), the code documentation to build RadeonHD is still around.

***

I did however have an off-shoot idea. Via's been trying, albeit poorly, to establish a good direction in Open-Source development. I wonder if Via's thinking about hiring Luc on an official basis...

[sreyan]

It's really a shame since radeonHD was so good and stable at what it was able to achieve. Best of luck Luc Verhaegen. As others have stated cash/and or hardware if you want it.

[deanjo]

It's really a shame since radeonHD was so good and stable at what it was able to achieve. Best of luck Luc Verhaegen. As others have stated cash/and or hardware if you want it.

Question being why doesn't ATI just send out the hardware under NDA to such developers with a proven track record? They send tonnes of pre-release hardware to review sites why can't the same be done for the devels?