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  • #31
    Originally posted by crazycheese View Post
    Sorry, I think you will understand what I mean.
    Even if it is russian.
    There is no irony, there is sadness.

    Its a matter of priorities i thing as in the case with cars. The russians never seemed to want to get into the car market. Its impossible for a country that can make top notch fighter jets (ie Sukhoi PAK FA) not be able to make a descent cars. (i could say the same for the us but anyway).

    Linux wasn't as focused on the desktop as it was to servers.

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    • #32
      Originally posted by 89c51 View Post
      Its a matter of priorities i thing as in the case with cars. The russians never seemed to want to get into the car market. Its impossible for a country that can make top notch fighter jets (ie Sukhoi PAK FA) not be able to make a descent cars. (i could say the same for the us but anyway).

      Linux wasn't as focused on the desktop as it was to servers.
      The reason is too much stealing habbit among managers, too much vodka and lack of perspective among engineers and goverment that is not interested in selling to own people, but gets more at exporting as well as protecting the country(and themself too).

      They are not interested, so russians just bought (importing) japanese, european and american cars.. Subaru for example is very favourite in Siberia.
      So yeah, it was not really russians fault and the money was there and those who offered, got it.

      And then comes this entertainer(really, was his job prior), starts small sportcar russian HQ and russian people buy it...
      Again, teaches something, no? =)

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      • #33
        Originally posted by Qaridarium
        i don't believe that sorry.

        and this in all ways you don't need to be good at it and you can help in many more ways.
        i don't think that implementing and optimizing (ie) an OpenGL4 or OpenCL state tracker is an easy task that anyone that understands a bit of C can do.

        bug reporting or testing or simple patches might be "easy(ier)" but it doesn't solve the problem of not having features.

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        • #34
          Originally posted by agd5f View Post
          Also, Linux doesn't encourage the sharing of source between OSes. The maintainers want the code to match the kernel coding style and will reject code that doesn't match. There are tons of open source drivers out there that use an OS abstraction layer to share the code between OSes, but they are never allowed upstream in Linux. It's not likely that our closed driver would be allowed upstream if we decided to open source without out a major rewrite. So I guess it would be a good investment to rewrite thousands of man years of source code to get it into the Linux kernel and then write a proper infrastructure to support all the advanced features available for 1-2 precent of the desktop market.
          The reason many distros can't ship it today is because they have a policy against closed source. As long as it's under an OSS license all distros would just ship the driver as a separate package, it doesn't have to go upstream to go open source. People could then slowly migrate/copy common functionality in the kernel. I'm guessing you were rather far out on the "Even if X and Y and Z was true, we still couldn't because..." already though.

          Anyway to get back to where this thread started, many software companies do some form of commissioned features. That is the software is already bought and paid for, but if the customer misses a feature and will fund development the company will implement it and make it part of their product. It's typically done in more corporate settings, but formulated well I don't see why it wouldn't work for "commissioning" open source driver development through public donations as well.

          I don't really think you need to say much more than what Bridgman and agd5f has already said on this forum, that AMD is positive to open source but that the Linux sales only support a limited amount of open source development. That they see an interest in helping out and welcome external contributors, but at the same time recognize that driver development of modern GPUs is a specialized niche few have expertize in. So to give more people the opportunity to contribute, they'll accept donations to accelerate development of the OSS drivers further using AMD developers. And point out that this comes on top of the effort AMD is already doing which will continue unabated.

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          • #35
            Originally posted by Kjella View Post
            [...]
            Anyway to get back to where this thread started, many software companies do some form of commissioned features. That is the software is already bought and paid for, but if the customer misses a feature and will fund development the company will implement it and make it part of their product. It's typically done in more corporate settings, but formulated well I don't see why it wouldn't work for "commissioning" open source driver development through public donations as well.
            [...]
            Sounds logical. Since the linux crowd goes to great lengths for their OS to work, this could be a good place to get some crowd-funding to work.
            If done right (set up in a central manner, with one collecting place, a clear goal, and sufficient linux-centric media buzz), this could yield quite some amount of money. Probably not the amount to pay full-time developers for a long time, but to finance punctual development, i.e. one or two features per round.
            Ever thought about why google does this "Summer of Code" thing instead comissioning 2-3 full-time, year-round positions? I'd guess they do it because it a) is cheaper, b) can be to fields unrelated to what they normally do, and c) generates a lot of positive reporting around the interwebs. Also something like the Open-source kinect drivers - the concept worked like a charm, and even brougth Adafruit some positive reputation. All that for 3000$, if i remeber correctly.

            So, if we could get a large, well-known body like the EFF* or Linux foundation to lend its good name for that, and organize a central collection via e.g. kickstarter, then probably we'd get enough money to comission some features for the drivers.

            *I always thought it was odd that the EFF made some things "high priority", but didn't even try to raise money for getting it done as well. Things like an open PowerVR SGX driver, a working Flash replacement, etc... All important, but more likely to get done anytime soon if there is more to get than only fame in the OSS community

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            • #36
              You cannot achieve anything, even mid-sized, on donations.
              Subscriptions from LARGE funders are the starting option.

              The best option is general "buy", with broad accessibility to normal people on street.
              Either buy and choose where to put the money, the "register" way.
              Or buy like on steam, but "pre-oder" "buy-out" style, just the way Bender has come to opensource.

              Every single other option is hobby.

              You should stop believing on wonders and work with real economy.

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              • #37
                Originally posted by Kjella View Post
                As long as it's under an OSS license all distros would just ship the driver as a separate package, it doesn't have to go upstream to go open source. People could then slowly migrate/copy common functionality in the kernel.
                My point was mostly that you'd still end up having to maintain two drivers since the kernel would not allow an OS abstraction layer and sharing the open source core code was kind of the point of that exercise. As people slowly migrated the stuff to the kernel, it would be harder and harder to port internal shared changes between trees. Plus, AMD would get a ration of crap from the kernel community for not working on the in-kernel version.

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                • #38




                  There are people that don't see a difference.
                  Gasoline Engine -- Yes
                  Seats -- Yes
                  Tires -- Yes
                  Black Paint -- Yes
                  Same basic shape -- Yes

                  You are paying more for less. The exterior is made out of plastic on the newer model. The rims are aluminum. Cheap made.

                  Truly the 79' Firebird was better because of the metal fenders. It is the same situation with video cards. The older ones were better at fixed function, quads, and 2D rendering text.

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                  • #39
                    libreoffice just raised 50k in a week (and say they were getting ~$1k/week before they asked)[0]. freedombox raised $60 is a similar time[1]. gimp got $2.5k in a week from people wanting to speed up development.

                    i am pretty sure anyone else (with a good reputation in the FOSS community) could do the same, and use it to hire a developer (assuming there is someone working on the radeon driver who is not paid full time to work on it).

                    [0] http://challenge.documentfoundation.org/
                    [1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...-0-to-60-in-30
                    [2] http://lists.xcf.berkeley.edu/lists/...ry/026006.html

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                    • #40
                      Originally posted by Qaridarium
                      thank you for pointing that out! thats true! the driver Development is just not well managed in the money part.
                      1) Gimp and LibreO are cross platform apps
                      2) They are apps which mean more to the end user

                      The user doesn't care about infrastructure much (if at all). He just wants to write text or touch up his photos. And those things can be done with blobs. Its not the same with Foss driver development.

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