The Truth About ATI/AMD & Linux

[Brotherred]

Go all FOSS or get trumped

looks impressive. but only on paper.

because the actual result is...well, you know.

DITTO

I just read most of this article and I have to say that as a current ATI user on my pcLinuxos I do not care about their developer issues. As a exclusive AMD CPU user I note with some pain that Intel is open sourcing (GPLing?) many of its drivers for many of their products. Including many of their low end video drivers.

I do not believe for a second that Intel is being "open" just to be friendly. They want to pound AMD into the ground. Intel's killer business plan lacks freedom in my view and also in that view it is some of that same freedom that is just waiting to help AMD/ATI compete.

AMD/ATI Do not and I mean do not complain about your closed development issues to me. You may not survive as you are.

[yoshi314]

Intel's killer business plan lacks freedom in my view and also in that view it is some of that same freedom that is just waiting to help AMD/ATI compete.

hmm i didn't quite get it. what exactly do you mean by that?

[Brotherred]

Domination

hmm i didn't quite get it. what exactly do you mean by that?

Well farther up in my post I said that Intel is not being "open" just to be friendly but they want to pound AMD into the ground.

That is so true. Now that Intel has open sourced (I think they are GPL) so many of their drivers we the GNU+Linux community are helping Intel do just that.

If AMD were to be as open as Intel is (GPL please) then well I am sorry that just would be such a great thing and good for all. I am speechless.

[yoshi314]

well intel might want to use its gpled drivers to bash competition.

but remember that gpl is like a trap - you cannot get your code out of it and move it to something more restrictive.

so i'm pretty sure intel thought very carefully about that move. even if intel become the last remaining gfx card vendor on the market the gpl code for the drivers would still benefit many people. the card pricing would be a different story :]

[adamk]

Wow... All this talk about the GPL'ed intel drivers when, in fact, they're under the MIT license. The same as Xorg. The only GPL'ed part would be the kernel module, and even that has a BSD licensed counter-part for use with FreeBSD.

Adam

[yoshi314]

well, my bad then.

i don't have an intel card, so i don't really know about that. but it's common knowledge that intel's stuff is quite open, licence-wise.

[Michael]

It's on Digg now: http://digg.com/linux_unix/ATI_AMD_s..._Cycle_Exposed

[ArcRiley]

does AMD get it?

I think I speak here for a fairly wide swath of GNU/Linux developers and distributors:

While the quality of the driver and it's release is of some importance, the license of that driver is the deal breaker.

Give us a poor driver with a free (as in freedom) license and the community will make it great.

Give us an excellent driver with a proprietary license and only a minority of users will use it.

Why?

Many distros (I'll use Fedora as an example) will not package proprietary drivers. Ubuntu, which I believe is the most popular right now, is on the fence and, at the very least, warns the user.

This is part of the fundamental nature of GNU/Linux: It's about freedom. Does AMD understand this yet? It doesn't seem so.

Moreso, because most free software developers ignore ATI's drivers as proprietary, there is little GNU/Linux software that takes advantage of the higher end cards. The DRI drivers on an r200/r300 card work just fine for almost everything.

Why would a user, then, pay $100+ for a higher-end video card when a $35 Radeon 9250 is better supported? For users it's thus a choice of price/benefit if nothing else.

If AMD wants to work better with our community they need to join our community. Break the closed development loop in favor of integrating their paid developers and "volunteer" driver developers, there's a number of skilled developers with DRI that I'm sure would be very willing to help should AMD do this.

Via has done this to some extent with their free drivers.

[Thund]

Someone please tell ATI/AMD that 1970's COBOL called; it wants it's software development methodology back.

11 weeks to address something that breaks? And "the train stops for no one"?

As long as there are changes upstream from the ATI driver (kernel. xorg, etc) that could cause issues, there will never be a stable driver. No amount of effort can fix their product until this is addressed.

[chilinux]

ATi treats Linux users like an used cars saleman treats...

ATi has always had a "say anything to get the sale" attitude toward Linux users. Their binary drivers don't take full advantage of their products including crippled 3D graphics accel, no MPEG/iDCT accel and no TV-in support. What I find the most offensive is the game they played with the Linux community regarding MPEG/iDCT accel with the claim there would be a "ATi VHA SDK for Linux" to provide this feature. In the *YEARS* that followed since ATi's announcement of vaporware the other vendors have actually delivered on this. VIA, nVidia and Intel each provide different degrees of XvMC support for the MPEG/iDCT accel in hardware that ATi promised and never actually provided. ATi still does not provide anything at all in this area.

Phoronix clearly shows how far they have sold out when pushing the ATi lie with:
"While R200 product support still does exist in a driver branch after being discontinued in the fglrx 8.28 release, AMD has no plans to release an updated R200 class driver. AMD's belief behind this is the open-source community was given the needed specifications a number of years ago..."

Hello! I'm a member of the FOSS community. I'm told by members of the GATOS project that have gotten specs that they can not share them with anyone else. Hence, their advice has been to contact ATi third-party vendor support to get my own copy of the specs so I can contribute. I have done this three times (over a 6 month period) via the web form and then finally once by calling the head of the team directly since they where never getting back to me. I was asked during the phone call to understand that they make no money from helping the FOSS community unlike other ATI third-party support users so I wouldn't be getting top priority on responding but they WILL provide something and "just wait paitently." Now **YEARS** after that promise I still have seen nothing including anything about driver interfacing with the R200.

Given that ATi cherry picks only a couple external developers to provide specifications too under non-redistribution terms and then ignore requests from the rest of interested parties, I find it to be a gross exaggeration and boardline fraud to claim that ATi has provided the R200 specifications to the *community* for YEARS. The truth is they have been blowing off majority of community members that request the specification. ATi knows that there are Linux community members that will be dumb enough to buy ATi product even if FOSS driver development is hindered by keeping the specs to possibly only two or three individuals in the community. From what I have learned checking on mailing list, the policy of ATi to give one PR line to the commmunity--all while the failure to deliver anything to the majority of interested developers continues under AMD's handling of the company. At AMD it is just business as usual of scopping up the BS and throwing it the face of Linux/ATI customers.

If ATi has really released the R200 specs to the **COMMUNITY** then please provide the URL where I can download the specs *NOW* instead of going through their COMPLETELY WORTHLESS "developer program" that their PR dept continues to claim is "working with the community" but never ever gets back to me (along with others).

Your article, which claims to be about "truth" but instead provides a method of appology for taking 3+ months to support new kernel/x.org releases while failing to explain why it has taken YEARS and ATi still hasn't honored their stated VHA SDK commitment to iDCT accelration for Linux and the ATi/AMD developer program continues to fail to PROVIDE ANY RESULTS to all but select FOSS developers that contact them.

That Phoronix would allow themselves to be a tool in the ATi/AMD PR deception game is troubling and speaks poorly for the future reputation of Phoronix.