HDMI Forum Rejects Open-Source HDMI 2.1 Driver Support Sought By AMD

[chithanh]

Show me any math model where I work to produce a good or service, give it away for free and still somehow generate revenue.

To add some economic theory to what bridgman wrote, in order to make money you have to sell something. But products usually do not stand alone, they interact in the market with other products, some of which are necessary for your product to be useful and are called "complements". Sometimes, companies commonly sell both the product and the complement (like with printers and ink/toner) and sometimes not (like with toothbrushes and toothpaste).

In order for your product to sell well, you want its complements be as cheap and widely accessible as possible. The extreme end which we observe in FOSS business models that companies sell one product, and give away its complement for free.

Joel Spolsky has written a good layman introduction into this concept, and how it applies to FOSS. I encourage you to read it in order to understand more. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/...tegy-letter-v/

[Panix]

🤷I gave you three links, two from user reports and one from BlurBusters. If you want VRR via DP->HDMI adapter then that is enough pointers to get started. If you just want to argue then no amount of references is going to be enough.

The situation is not yet that you can buy and plug in any random adapter and it works. But modern hardware is capable, just the software and firmware side needs more attention.

Yeah, 2 guys who claim 'it works' - but, that's it. BlurBusters? That was just a blog.
I think buying one of these adapters is like playing Russian Roulette. You might win but your chances are very low. It's just like taking a chance and getting on your knees.

Yes, the firmware is the key - which is a pretty risky thing to put a hope on.

AMD is in a bind and can't do much about it - hoping that adapters solve their problem for them. Unfortunately, there's no large screens for monitors to choose from unless you are a gazzionaire.

[smitty3268]

Feel free to explain to this weasel the economic principle that enables someone to make money from giving their product away for free, other than donations that is.

When i was working on my college degrees, i needed to pay tuition and consequently accumulated significant amounts of student loan debt.

Show me any math model where I work to produce a good or service, give it away for free and still somehow generate revenue.

To add some economic theory to what bridgman wrote, in order to make money you have to sell something. But products usually do not stand alone, they interact in the market with other products, some of which are necessary for your product to be useful and are called "complements". Sometimes, companies commonly sell both the product and the complement (like with printers and ink/toner) and sometimes not (like with toothbrushes and toothpaste).

In order for your product to sell well, you want its complements be as cheap and widely accessible as possible. The extreme end which we observe in FOSS business models that companies sell one product, and give away its complement for free.

Joel Spolsky has written a good layman introduction into this concept, and how it applies to FOSS. I encourage you to read it in order to understand more. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/...tegy-letter-v/

For a concrete example, think about gaming consoles. At some points, the manufacturers have sold their consoles at a loss in order to get it into the most hands possible. The idea being that they then make up for that lost money when those people buy games to run on their consoles. The more people who can buy games, the more money they can make.

Or something like social media (facebook?), which allows people to freely post/read on their platform while assuming they will make money from advertising on top of it. The more people who use facebook, the more valuable the advertising is, so you give that part of the product away for free.

It does make for a somewhat risky business model. You have to be able to cover losses until the revenue starts coming in, and if it doesn't then you're kind of screwed. That's not so different than starting up manufacturing for a new physical product, though, where you need to finance it all ahead of time and hope people end up buying.

[ezst036]

Feel free to explain to this weasel the economic principle that enables someone to make money from giving their product away for free, other than donations that is.

When i was working on my college degrees, i needed to pay tuition and consequently accumulated significant amounts of student loan debt.

Show me any math model where I work to produce a good or service, give it away for free and still somehow generate revenue.

I already demonstrated this with the companies aforementioned in the previous comment. Software has three potential revenue sources:

1) Service/subscription
2) per-item software licenses
3) per-CPU licensing (servers/corporate)

(I didn't mention #3 last time.) In any case, you can put on some kabuki theater as if subscription revenue doesn't exist all you want, but don't act like everybody is going to join you. There's big money, big big big money to be made in the world of free open source.

[sophisticles]

The traditional approach is "give away the lemonade and sell the antidote", ie give away the core product but sell support services and add-on products.

That model is hard to apply on a small scale, but did work for larger orgs.

You do realize that in order for that to work the "lemonade" needs to be spiked with poison first.

If the lemonade doesn't make anyone sick then there's no need for an antidote.

Show me the large scale organization where the core product is given away for free but sell support services and add-on products.

Microsoft doesn't do it, Apple doesn't do it, red Hat doesn't do it, AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, no one does it.

The problem with the approach you describe is that if you give the core product away for free there is nothing forcing the end user to come to you for support, they can hire a cheaper consultant or an in-house person that can provide the support they desire.

[sophisticles]

For a concrete example, think about gaming consoles. At some points, the manufacturers have sold their consoles at a loss in order to get it into the most hands possible. The idea being that they then make up for that lost money when those people buy games to run on their consoles. The more people who can buy games, the more money they can make.

Or something like social media (facebook?), which allows people to freely post/read on their platform while assuming they will make money from advertising on top of it. The more people who use facebook, the more valuable the advertising is, so you give that part of the product away for free.

It does make for a somewhat risky business model. You have to be able to cover losses until the revenue starts coming in, and if it doesn't then you're kind of screwed. That's not so different than starting up manufacturing for a new physical product, though, where you need to finance it all ahead of time and hope people end up buying.

Gaming consoles where never sold at a lose, they may have been sold at a low profit margin or at cost, but never at a lose.

Moreover, gaming consoles effectively tie the purchaser to games that run on that console.

Facebook makes its money not only on advertising but by selling your personal info. This is the reason they demand real names, they farm your page and fell your profiles to marketing companies.

I used to have a FB page under a pseudonym, I made a comment on an article that someone didn't like, they reported me and FB shutdown my account and demanded a photo ID with my real name and picture to verify my identify.

Needless to say I no longer have a FB page.

[sophisticles]

(I didn't mention #3 last time.) In any case, you can put on some kabuki theater as if subscription revenue doesn't exist all you want, but don't act like everybody is going to join you. There's big money, big big big money to be made in the world of free open source.

Show me one company making more money from open source than MS makes from closed source.

[bridgman]

You do realize that in order for that to work the "lemonade" needs to be spiked with poison first. If the lemonade doesn't make anyone sick then there's no need for an antidote.

The specific wording was intended to be funny (not in isolation but in reference to the thousands of times the "cute neighborhood kids selling poisoned lemonade" trope has appeared in comics over the years)...

... but the spirit of it is what we commonly call open core, where the core software product is open source but it can be enhanced and extended using proprietary software. IBM and RH have both done a pretty good job of combining open source and closed source products over the years, although I don't remember if they managed to do it at the same time.

FWIW almost every strategy fails if you are willing to fail it simply for "making less money than Microsoft"

[duby229]

Gaming consoles where never sold at a lose, they may have been sold at a low profit margin or at cost, but never at a lose.

Moreover, gaming consoles effectively tie the purchaser to games that run on that console.

Facebook makes its money not only on advertising but by selling your personal info. This is the reason they demand real names, they farm your page and fell your profiles to marketing companies.

I used to have a FB page under a pseudonym, I made a comment on an article that someone didn't like, they reported me and FB shutdown my account and demanded a photo ID with my real name and picture to verify my identify.

Needless to say I no longer have a FB page.

You're so wrong, many game consoles have been sold at a loss. Your favorite company MS sold Xbox360 at an unbelievable loss. It had something like a 55% failure rate before warranty expiration, they were replacing more than half every console sold... Which is why they extended the warranty to 3 years from the initial 1 year. (They had to, if they didn't the consoles were dying so fast that before long there wouldn't be any left running!) I think that's probably the most extreme example, but far from the only one.

[Panix]

You're so wrong, many game consoles have been sold at a loss. Your favorite company MS sold Xbox360 at an unbelievable loss. It had something like a 55% failure rate before warranty expiration, they were replacing more than half every console sold... Which is why they extended the warranty to 3 years from the initial 1 year. (They had to, if they didn't the consoles were dying so fast that before long there wouldn't be any left running!) I think that's probably the most extreme example, but far from the only one.

Yet games are so expensive - close to $100 most of them - so, someone must have bought the console to play them. I don't think MS and Sony are doing too badly. Yeah, they might have junk but it's being sold.