AMD Loses Its Linux Core Engineering Manager

[Veerappan]

I sure as hell hope not.

Agreed. To have one of the bigger OS developers end up as the Linux lead would probably mean he'd probably no longer be able to contribute to the open source drivers (for accidental IP disclosure reasons, and also free time).

And to mtippet, thank you for your work at AMD/ATI, good luck with Palm, and I'm looking forward to the articles and work on PTS.

[mtippett]

Thanks all for the kind words.

I'll use an analogy to capture my thoughts. The analogy is that of a mountain that we have been climbing for the last few years (and will continue to climb for the next decade .

I look back at where the driver came from (3.2.5 was the first release that I was involved with the driver) and I look how far up the mountain we have come, it is simply amazing.

The really hard work is now done, we have a thriving permenant base camp My team and the other AMD teams that have brought us to the point that Linux is now front and centre with flagship product launches have done an amazing job. Without the internal AMD support to help Linux move forwards, we would still be edging forwards from the drivers of old.

I have complete confidence in the direction that AMD is going with the graphics drivers. Linux is a fundamental part of what AMD does for graphics software. From the outside there may be gaps in what people want, but from the inside the work is slowly but surely being done. Patience is a virtue, and driver development is a long game.

The reality is that there is still a long hard mountain remaining to climb, not just for AMD, but for the whole Linux ecosystem.

I'll continue to do my part to continue to climbing the mountain by helping Michael with articles contributed to Phoronix on aspects of the Linux-space as well as a few other projects that will probably get valuable discussions going.

Thanks again everyone, it's been an amazing experience. I'm off to start climbing another smaller not-measured-in-Teraflops-mountain that is looking just as dangerous .

[Jahara]

Thanks :-)

[bugmenot]

Yep, thanks.
Would be nice to see maybe a few patches from you for ati open source drivers from time to time?

[Louise]

[snip]

Thanks for the amazing work you have put into Linux. It will shine forever.

Did you read the nVidia interview? Is the Catalyst process similar to nVidia's?

[mtippett]

Did you read the nVidia interview? Is the Catalyst process similar to nVidia's?

I responded heavily in the forum associated with the article. It wasn't about AMD, but it was about an area of expertise, hint-hint .

Any graphics company will always deal with the same sets of problems, issues and opportunities identified by Andy. The final implementation may be different, but realistically, there is a high level of symmetry.

(Exact answers will need to come from someone who is with AMD .

[Louise]

I responded heavily in the forum associated with the article. It wasn't about AMD, but it was about an area of expertise, hint-hint .

You are right. I have no idea what I was thinking. I'd better some sleep

Any graphics company will always deal with the same sets of problems, issues and opportunities identified by Andy. The final implementation may be different, but realistically, there is a high level of symmetry.

(Exact answers will need to come from someone who is with AMD .

Hehe.

Just thinking. We know what we have right now when you and John were the managers. What if the new manager is anti open source?

Could that happen, or can John override such mania in case it should ever occur?

It would be great if AMD put of the job announcement at Slashdot

[mtippett]

Just thinking. We know what we have right now when you and John were the managers. What if the new manager is anti open source?

Could that happen, or can John override such mania in case it should ever occur?

Linux != Open Source.

The Linux part is heavily ingrained, it won't disappear easily. John is taking care of the Open Source part quite nicely at the moment.

I'm not concerned about the direction. The bumps are part of the journey .

[Louise]

Linux != Open Source.

I think it depends on who you ask.

To me, I would never use a closed source program, if an open source version is available. Just last week, I needed to do some photo editing. Eventhough Photoshop is easier to "get up and running" and have a bigger community, and when with gimp

Yes, I use the Catalyst driver on my Fedora 11, but I switched from nVidia to ATi last year, and from Fedora 13 on, I won't use any closed source any more.

The Linux part is heavily ingrained, it won't disappear easily. John is taking care of the Open Source part quite nicely at the moment.

I'm not concerned about the direction. The bumps are part of the journey .

That's good to hear

[Kano]

@mtippett

I wish you all the best for your new job and hopefully your successor will care more about casual Linux users and fglrx problems which are visible since years like Xv. I also remeber renderings problems which took 11 month to fix. Also that XvBA did not appear in your time as manager is a fail for me - vdpau took over and ATI lost possible leadership as XvBA was even announced before.