AMD loosing money, uncertain free software development funding?

[pedepy]

maybe i'm missing something here but .. is releasing technical specifications and working collaboratively with the open source community not cheaper than hiring extra staff to work extra hours on developing a closed sourced solution behind closed doors ?

[bridgman]

The costs are lower for an open source approach (although the difference are less than you might expect if you include the time of all the senior technical folks that need to be involved in reviews), but the financial risks are higher.

The problem is that for some markets you need the closed source driver *anyways*, so supporting open source development ends up as an additional cost, not a savings.

[Kano]

Well could you define "cost" per driver in % or $ like

x % win
y % fglrx
z % oss

I would guess oss is less then 1 % of the money ati spends for developing win drivers.

[energyman]

Well could you define "cost" per driver in % or $ like

x % win
y % fglrx
z % oss

I would guess oss is less then 1 % of the money ati spends for developing win drivers.

which would go nicely with the market share.

[Azultra]

The costs are lower for an open source approach (although the difference are less than you might expect if you include the time of all the senior technical folks that need to be involved in reviews), but the financial risks are higher.

The problem is that for some markets you need the closed source driver *anyways*, so supporting open source development ends up as an additional cost, not a savings.

Risks, additional costs, but paving the way to a saner world

[xiando]

which would go nicely with the market share.

I've disinfected four laptops with AMD ("ATI") graphics chips who were pre-infected with the Windows by electronics stores this month alone. The Windows "market share" is highly over-rated, it is really a question of counting people who are forced to pay for the Windows because it is bundled with hardware they buy or counting people who are actually using it. I also strongly suspect that the fglrx market share numbers are highly inflated as it is a piece of trash.

[elanthis]

I've disinfected four laptops with AMD ("ATI") graphics chips who were pre-infected with the Windows by electronics stores this month alone. The Windows "market share" is highly over-rated, it is really a question of counting people who are forced to pay for the Windows because it is bundled with hardware they buy or counting people who are actually using it.

And yet those sales figures don't count the number of people illegally downloading Windows. I know far, far, far more people who do that than who cripple their hardware by installing Linux and its barely-usable graphics drivers.

Point is, your Linux-over-Windows installations are not even a drop in the bucket compared to the number of untracked Windows installations out there.

[highlandsun]

And yet those sales figures don't count the number of people illegally downloading Windows. I know far, far, far more people who do that than who cripple their hardware by installing Linux and its barely-usable graphics drivers.

Point is, your Linux-over-Windows installations are not even a drop in the bucket compared to the number of untracked Windows installations out there.

This may be a dumb question, but what could an obviously pro-Windows user possibly find worthwhile about hanging out on a web site like phoronix.com which obviously has nothing to do with Windows?

[elanthis]

This may be a dumb question, but what could an obviously pro-Windows user possibly find worthwhile about hanging out on a web site like phoronix.com which obviously has nothing to do with Windows?

Look, dude, there is a huge difference between "pro Windows" and "realizes that Windows has clear and unarguable advantages over Linux to the average person." I know that can be a little hard to understand for people who define their life style based around freaking piece of software, but out here in Reality Land, getting defensive about an OS is just pathetic.

If you think Linux is any way a better OS for regular people than Windows, then you simply are totally disconnected from what regular people want out of a computer. People like us get excited about the ability to modify core OS components. Regular people are terrified of anything close to the idea of having to modify core OS components. People like us want flexible, configurable environments. Regular people want an environment that never, ever changes because change is confusing and they don't even really understand the basic concept of what a GUI button is, they just learn to "click that rectangle thing to make it go." People like us get excited when we see a hobby Open Source game project running on Open Source video drivers. Regular people think those hobby games look and play like shit, and think people who pay $200 for a graphics card they can't use because of lacking drivers are retards. People like us follow development forums and mailing lists and git repos because seeing development happen and playing with the latest changes is exciting. Regular people are terrified of any update, usually ignore updates, and stick with ancient software like Windows XP because that way they don't have to deal with change. People like us get excited by the release of a new distribution. Regular people get excited about being able to run the newest games like the Left 4 Dead 2 demo.

Windows sucks hard at quite a few things of its own. Many of those are things people like us really, really care about. Unfortunately for people like you who want to live in unicorn-sunshine-Linux-everywhere land, the things that Windows sucks at aren't the things regular people care about, while the things that Linux sucks at are the things regular people get upset over.

I love using Linux, but only when I don't have to use it for regular people stuff. I literally can't use it for a number of things, most of which are due to the pathetic state of the graphics stack. My Vista laptop with an Intel 3100 IGP gets 5x the performance on a stupid-simple OpenGL app for school than what the Linux box with a freaking ATI HD4770 an do... and the Linux box renders things wrong, frequently locks up in X, or just gets random amounts of screen corruption.

Even if Linux had perfect graphics drivers, there's the issue with software installation -- namely, that it's near impossible for anybody who isn't a major mega nerd to do. Real people don't want to install the crap in the distro repositories. Little hint: Fallout 3 will never be in any distro's repository. Even in a hypothetical world where triple-A game titles were released completely as Free Software (and not 5 years after they are no longer relevant to the majority of people, like id's Quake code releases), no distro is going to include 4GB of data packages for a single application, much less 4GB of data packages each for thousands of applications. A real-person OS absolutely requires the ability to easily install third-party software, which the Linux distros go out of their way to make difficult, to the point where even fully Open Source apps have to be repackaged and redistributed not only for each distro but for each version of each distro. To think that the appliance model Linux is saddled with is acceptable is once again proof of a total disconnect with what real people want.

I write Fedora packages. Regular people either click an icon to install software or don't ever manage to get it installed ever. I'm a completely and utterly different class of user than regular people. The difference between me and most Linux users is that I realize that user class distinction exists instead of pretending that Linux is a great OS for everyone.

This site is focused on improving one of those huge short comings of Linux for regular people, namely graphics. I look forward to that day that my graphics projects not only compile on Linux but can actually run properly and at acceptable frame rates on Linux. That'll be a good day. It will only be one small step towards making Linux an everyman's OS though.

[amphigory]

Look, dude, there is a huge difference between "pro Windows" and "realizes that Windows has clear and unarguable advantages over Linux to the average person."

Amen. One uses the best tool for the job... not the socially correct one. Windows or OS X is the best tool for the vast majority of users. After 11 years of Linux experience (circa Redhat 5) I'm still doing the configure-make-install tango to make my systems do what I want. No rational person would want to do that. ;-)