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  • #71
    Originally posted by bridgman View Post
    One of the decisions we made early on was to work within existing xorg support mechanisms (mailing lists, IRC, bugzilla) rather than setting up AMD-specific forums etc...
    That's excellent news

    The open source drivers will have video and will not be doing decryption so I don't think there will be any legal concerns.
    For AMD or Xorg, no there won't be legal concerns. My point was that it may be another story for the user. Currently, to view a DVD on a Linux machine, I have to load css lib which are in a gray legal zone. For some folks in some countries, it will be a relief to have a driver (even if closed) that enable them to view DVD without installing legally-gray and harder to find decryption libraries. This will also apply to BD or HDDVD.

    Not sure what you mean about repro-ing a closed source driver issue on open source to get support -- that only works if you switch to the open source driver. There are pretty good support forums for the closed source driver (Phoronix for example) and the request is normally "post your logs" not "repro on an open driver".
    Well, in kernel land, the answer is generally "remove this proprietary driver, reproduce the problem, then we'll talk".

    On Xorg mailing list, they won't hear about problems involving proprietary driver. For AMD/ATI users, it may be hard to decide if the issue is a fglrx problem or an Xorg problem.

    If Phoronix can be used (an advertised) as a single point of support for AMD/ATI problems, then users should be fine. In this case, Phoronix should redirect the queries to Xorg mailing list when needed.

    We're trying to keep the driver choice simple. Most distros will include the open source driver, so that's what we expect people to use by default. Users would upgrade to the closed source driver to get specific features or performance not available in the open source driver. OEMs shipping SKUs with Linux preloaded could choose either, depending on the features they needed and on whether they were looking to the distro or to AMD for integration support.
    Good.

    Thanks for the explanations

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    • #72
      I have to load css lib which are in a gray legal zone.
      Come on, be honest. You know its un-enforceable to prevent people from installing those libraries. Its like a common sense things to install on every new install of linux on my systems. I wouldn't even worry about that.

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      • #73
        Originally posted by damentz View Post
        Come on, be honest. You know its un-enforceable to prevent people from installing those libraries. Its like a common sense things to install on every new install of linux on my systems. I wouldn't even worry about that.
        Yeah it would effectively be telling us that we cant watch dvd movies becouse of our choice of operating systems. Can you imagine the shit storm that would follow.

        I would actually love to see it go to court. That would be wonderful. If ATi is unwilling to kill DRM, that theoretical court case might possibly do it. And if not then it would certainly put a big dent in the system, and provide the good guys with some precedence for our cause.

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        • #74
          Originally posted by rbmorse View Post
          Reedman: Read post #20 of this thread.
          and that essentially means: Yes, we WILL spit on the private customers so that we may sell to oems, which btw, are doing completely stupid stuff..

          i'd like to have heard from bridgman what AMD's official answer to my direct questions are.. but i guess that wont happen, as all the AMD highups are too spineless to actually admit that they are a bunch of ba******

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          • #75
            and that essentially means: Yes, we WILL spit on the private customers so that we may sell to oems, which btw, are doing completely stupid stuff..
            It's not just OEMs who need this. Board manufacturers also want WHQL certification, which means that the protection mechanisms have to be there in both the GPU and the driver.

            I think you're suggesting that we build different GPUs which operate without the protection mechanisms, targetted only at the Linux consumer market ? The problem with that, to be blunt, is cost of development vs. the sales we could reasonably expect -- even a tiny change to a modern GPU costs millions of dollers in fab charges for each GPU and I imagine we would at least need a high end and low end GPU per year -- and as far as we can see there isn't anywhere near enough market to cover the costs. What we *can* do is develop drivers which give you the benefits of the hardware without the restrictions of the protection logic -- once that is done, what do you see as the remaining problem ?

            i'd like to have heard from bridgman what AMD's official answer to my direct questions are.. but i guess that wont happen, as all the AMD highups are too spineless to actually admit that they are a bunch of ba******
            Sorry, I thought I had covered your questions with previous answers.

            Does AMD/ATI feel they wish, and that its better for them, to babysit the complete and utter stupidity of some totally clueless and moronic content providers, to keep them believing in FALSE "truths", rather than directly giving their own customers what they want?
            Not really. In order for our products to get to our end customers, we first need to sell them to OEMs and board manufacturers, and *those* groups both require what *they* perceive as a legal solution for HD/BD playback, which usually means the combination of a MS operating system and a certified player app. For SD DVD there is a bit more wiggle room and as far as I can see we should be able to open up that part of the hardware to the dev community so they can implement completely DRM-free drivers.

            I already have a pretty good idea of the answer, but i would like for you to go to whomever is in charge around there in AMD/ATI, and ask them this question, because im really interrested in it, and this should clarify just how far AMD will be going, who their loyalties really is to, stupid content providers, or the customers who put the food on the table(well, ill bet some of those higher-ups of AMD gets alot of food on their own personal table from clueless content providers, but thats a different story).
            Again, see above. The problem is that we don't sell chips to you directly -- we sell chips to companies who build PC products, and *those* companies have legal requirements to... well, you get the idea.

            I have to admit I don't fully understand this last question. Are you suggesting that we should refuse to participate in the bulk of the Windows market and try to survive selling only DRM-free products into the Linux consumer market ?
            Last edited by bridgman; 08 February 2008, 05:22 PM.
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            • #76
              Do you know that the intel driver has a possibilty to load a binary part? This is not yet used but how about that way?

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              • #77
                I believe Intel did use the binary mechanism for a while then stopped. I'll try to ask Keith about it at FOSDEM, but my guess is that they found it was a good approach for SD DVD but wasn't sufficiently secure for HD/BD. There are also rumours it was only used for a shader optimizer and had nothing to do with content protection, so it's anyone's guess.

                We will look at all those options. I just don't want to get anyone's hopes up about UVD unless we have a solution in hand. Right now I'm pretty confident about the IDCT/MC blocks but less confident about UVD.
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                • #78
                  Hello bridgman. Zooko here with your regular LWN sales pitch. LWN's coverage of LCA talks on X:



                  include Your Editor, Jonathan Corbet, reporting that "word on the street" is that the radeon driver is likely to be the winner over the radeonhd driver.

                  Regards,

                  Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn

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                  • #79
                    Originally posted by bridgman View Post
                    I believe Intel did use the binary mechanism for a while then stopped. I'll try to ask Keith about it at FOSDEM, but my guess is that they found it was a good approach for SD DVD but wasn't sufficiently secure for HD/BD.
                    Intel's binary module for their video driver was optional and had just contained Macrovision registers and some 3D optimizations. (Though I never noticed any performance difference.)

                    There was a discussion about it last year on the xorg or LKML that I'll see if I can find.
                    Michael Larabel
                    https://www.michaellarabel.com/

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                    • #80
                      Originally posted by Michael View Post
                      There was a discussion about it last year on the xorg or LKML that I'll see if I can find.

                      Macrovision confirmation:


                      3D confirmation:
                      Michael Larabel
                      https://www.michaellarabel.com/

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