Mixing open and closed source

[glisse]

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.

Xorg people are ready to provide support on things we can fix, if we start helping user with closed source driver we are heading for a lot of wasted time. So we simply don't provide any support and you likely will have a crude answer from one of us.

Phoronix is not where we want to see bug report, if you face a bug go to bugs.freedesktop.org and try to check if there isn't yet a but similar to the one you are facing if not then open a new one and provide enough informations. Meanwhile phoronix.com also provide a good place to look for help & informations.

My point is that there is already a central place where user can find support and where he should report problem. Every things is on freedesktop.org. There is several wiki their and we are always looking for people to contribute to it (for instance you can documents their how you worked around a problem you had or any others revealent things).

[glisse]

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.

It's not up to ATI to kill DRM. DRM have been sell by few big IT company to big media company (some being the same company). They did sell DRM by telling that this will help to create new market like pay per view, or renting. They also lied to the media company by stating that this drm would protect them from piracy, which you can't given the amount of money several illegal organization make by breaking this protection.

So in the end it all boils down to wait for media company to understand that they are just shooting themself in the feet with DRM and that their legal user have less freedom than their illegal one and once enough people realize that it won't last long.

In the meantime their is a market which ask for DRM capable hw whether you like it or not. AMD could not afford not being on this market.

Will linux grow support for new DRM, maybe but i don't think so given how apple had to include things in their kernel. I don't think linux kernel community will accept any invasive change. So we will likely stay away of this things.

As an end note, in the whole world there is very few people really aware of what is DRM, what it does, how did it appear, and why it's useless. Not every people read technical things, in fact most of people prefer to skip this kind of things

[djdoo]

@glisse:
I totally with you my friend and i think we have made this DRM thing a software CIA agent here.

I can remember almost same discussions about the macrovision restrictions of the normal DVDs a few years ago then someone(as usual...) broke that thing and we can all playback, rip, copy industrial Video DVDs under Linux.

So why DRM should be a difficult situation for our hackers?

I understand that OEMs are asking for that DRM cause they want be legally covered but against who?
Who is the one that will take the OEM company to the court if it doesn't use DRM??
The movie industry?
That is what I don't understand...

[Redeeman]

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 ?



Sorry, I thought I had covered your questions with previous answers.



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.



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 ?

Im suggesting that what you(not you personally, but AMD) are doing is caving in to totally clueless stupidity. the DRM is broken, and it _ALWAYS_ will. If the DRM actually served a good purpose i might, MIGHT be willing to accept that you sacrifise the very small user base, in favor of the large one. This is not the case however, so what you are doing is essentially bowing down because OEMS are clueless and doesent understand the reality of things.

If i were AMD, i would be pressuring them, or at the very very least, make sure that the drm crap is totally separate, to not sacrifise the smaller groups, who pay more for less(which it seems you MAY do for the next-next-gen ones.).

but what i would expect and think AMD should do, is to pressure OEMS, and microsoft. lets face it, AMD cannot compete in the performance area, be it cpu's or gpus, but this is gpus, and nvidia has the performance crown, and that doesent seem likely to change soon, so why do people buy amd/ati? because its slightly cheaper. And this matters to OEMS, and OEMS matters to m$, as those are what keeps them in power. So i say, tell the OEMS they can shell up more for nvidia, or put pressure on m$. hell, if you didnt have to develop drm crap you might be able to sell such a chip for $1 cheaper, or $0.5. This matters if an OEM is about to buy 10 million chips.

but that wasnt really relevant, my question was, if AMD prioitizes catering to the needs of completely clueless and useless opinions of content providers and those oems, than the people who go out in shops and buy a retail AMD/ATI chip.


alternatively maybe you should have some sort of "pay for what you get" policy, kindof like how it is EVERY OTHER INDUSTRY. so that if AMD disallows me to use some feature, they dont charge me for it.

Basically what im asking is, what compells me to, and what justifications is there, for having me pay full price for a piece of hardware, which AMD tells me i must not use - and i dont mean drm, i dont give a damn about that, what i do care about is the video decoder itself, which should be a generally available video decoder.

From where i stand, this is no different than if some car dealer sells a 5 gear car, and since im male, the car dealer does nothing, and i can enjoy all 5 gears, but if a female shopper bought the car, the car dealer would put a big fat lock and chain on the fifth gear, and still charge full price, advertising it as a 5 gear car.


i realize that OEMS and m$ to some degree are against you, but from my perspective, given the information i have(and if its incomplete, i would suggest that a priority should be to get the real stuff out here), AMD is doing far from all it could, and basically all of these things would be in its own interrest.

What do AMD get out of this? well.. people like me typically influence alot of shopping. I work as a consultant (IT related), i do all sorts of stuff. Stuff i regularly do is get contacted for advise on what to buy. This is not so attractive to me per se, as i am primarily a developer. However i have started seeing it from a much bigger perspective. If i get to basically decide what hardware gets bought, in somewhat big quantities, i can that way show with dollar signs what i want. And this is just to say, AMD is loosing big time. i realize that you have much bigger customers than for example 1-10k pieces of hardware (gpu and/or cpu) each year, but im just 1 person. And i can tell you now, I do not recommend AMD, and i given the information you have provided, i do not see this changing any time soon, and take this from me, never in my life before have i ever bought intel cpu's - well guess what, now i recommend to EVERYONE to get intel stuff, and theres a huge trend for shifting to laptops now - and well, thats really nice, since intel has graphics and cpus, and they act the best there is on the market today, so i recommend them. I would love to recommend AMD/ATI even for desktops, unfortunately i cannot do that, as well.. intels desktop graphics is fast enough for the vast majority, and well...

well.. im still not nearly an OEM, but im here, and theres more like me.


just try to understand, AMD's bowing down to clueless moron OEMS doesent actually help you, Try to educate them, and you'd get a whole slew of benefits you(well, your boss(s) anyway) probably cant even imagine.

The free/open -source community can be a very great asset, not to mention alot of users who doesent care, but simply would be HAPPY customers.

so i ask, is AMD currently involved in trying to educate OEMS, which you indicate is a big showstopper for you actually doing what end users want, or do you just bown down without caring? (again, by "you", i mean AMD/ATI, not you personally)
Because if indeed such efforts are under way, it would count big time towards what i percieve as trying to act in the end users interrest - the only thing i could see you do much better then, is to just no matter what they think, make hardware that has features available for everyone. DRM is inheritly something we do not give a damn about, so its naturally we dont care about info on getting that to work - but video decoder, we care very much about that(well, intel(hehe, them again) is helping alot with getting that care away, by putting out extremely powerful cpu's much cheaper than AMD(hello E8400)), but still, this is a feature that SHOULD work without drm, and if it indeed did, i wouldnt care about drm not being available.

So i can only hope AMD's newer hradware will have this separate as it really really should be, and that you ofcourse also would try to go in and educate clueless OEMs, instead of just letting them terrorize end users, because even though the OEMS might "force"(i dont believe in that, ultimately its AMD that decides to do it, but they do apply pressure), its not the OEMs i see as the "bad guy". I do not buy from OEMs, i buy from you(well, via some card manufaturer). and im sorry to say, its you i see limiting me when i cannot use my hardware(not that this is happening, as i do not have such new ATI hardware)

Well.. this was a long message, but i hope you can use some of what i've written to improve relations/products towards us, and in turn, help AMD. Because i really always only bought AMD, but today, the reasons against it is just so very very big, while the reasons for are.. well... not quite so big.

[bridgman]

its not the OEMs i see as the "bad guy". I do not buy from OEMs, i buy from you(well, via some card manufaturer). and im sorry to say, its you i see limiting me when i cannot use my hardware

OK, let me try again.

OEMs and board vendors want Windows drivers. Without WHQL certification the drivers won't install. You don't get WHQL certification without the DRM support, whether you are AMD, Intel, NVidia, or anyone else.

ATI has always been the most outspoken company in the industry about DRM. You are having this discussion with an AMD/ATI employee, not someone from another graphics vendor even though everyone implements the same DRM capabilities and everyone has the same challenges in the Linux market. Do you think we are the only ones who implement DRM ?

I honestly don't understand why you are picking on us rather than other graphics vendors. I hate to think it's because we are the only ones willing to actually talk about it.

[glisse]

Im suggesting that what you(not you personally, but AMD) are doing is caving in to totally clueless stupidity. the DRM is broken, and it _ALWAYS_ will. If the DRM actually served a good purpose i might, MIGHT be willing to accept that you sacrifise the very small user base, in favor of the large one. This is not the case however, so what you are doing is essentially bowing down because OEMS are clueless and doesent understand the reality of things.

If i were AMD, i would be pressuring them, or at the very very least, make sure that the drm crap is totally separate, to not sacrifise the smaller groups, who pay more for less(which it seems you MAY do for the next-next-gen ones.).

I haven't read carefully all post but from my understanding of previous conversation i did have with AMD peoples is that the video decoding capabilities are tightly tied with the video content protection system. As such giving the informations on video decoding will lead easily to find out the protection system things, and like all of DRM in computer nowadays, it relies on the obscurity ie if you know one of the piece in chain you can break the whole easily.

On the other hand, i believe AMD is designing its next hw in a way where they can split decoding and DRM things ie where they can expose without any risk decoding. You must understand that current hw have been designed years ago when ATI had not commitment to open source and so just didn't care to split DRM from decoding.

I am sad about it but this is just how it's right now. But i am pretty sure using the 3d engine we can accelerate enough things to remove some pressure of CPU. Well we still have big bunch of code todo before getting their

Just a side note years ago their was hack to disable macrovision on nv or ati hw, if such things happen nowadays i believe any of this company will have to seriously increase the payroll of their layers

[djdoo]

WHQL... So that's the problem here... WHQL certification does not come without DRM. Bingo!

Without WHQL certification the drivers won't install.

So it is not the movie industry, Microsoft is the Blocker! and OEMs just do what Mr Gates wants.

God Bless America... We are facing a global software dictatorship here guys!

Now Mr Gates is making business with countries and my country Greece became one of them very recently. We are totally holded by the b****.

[Svartalf]

I haven't read carefully all post but from my understanding of previous conversation i did have with AMD peoples is that the video decoding capabilities are tightly tied with the video content protection system. As such giving the informations on video decoding will lead easily to find out the protection system things, and like all of DRM in computer nowadays, it relies on the obscurity ie if you know one of the piece in chain you can break the whole easily.

The encryption is separate from the actual data stream in pretty much all aspects- otherwise you wouldn't have MPEG1/2/4 or h.264 software decoders on Linux in the first place. The reason I've been able to ascertain that they don't have them as separate components is that the media companies are so damned paranoid someone will dip into the decrypted stream that they have to prevent a separation of the two functionalities so that you "can't" do it. Unfortunately, they've not quite twigged onto the reality that at some point you HAVE to break it apart to show it to a human being, especially if you want to get PAID for producing it.

Heh... Most of what they're worried about is like locking excrement in a safe and then locking the safe inside a safe, really.

I'd be looking elsewhere for hardware boost of operations, really- you're not going to get ANY traction out of companies like AMD for some time yet. Probably until either the media companies wise up, or the computer industry as a whole wakes up from the delusion that they actually "need" the media industry to keep themselves going at the levels they're at. Sure, they are helping it along- but they're not needed by the other.

[bridgman]

In fairness, it's still the content providers who hold the cards. Microsoft made the effort to come up with technical proposals which the content providers would accept, making it possible for PC equipment suppliers to "legally" (and yes, I understand that means different things in different countries) play HD content on PCs.

It's important to understand that this is something the PC industry in general *wanted*. I have heard here from many users that video playback is one of the key things they do on their systems, whether through a certified player app or some other means, and being able to offer HD playback in all countries is a huge boost to the PC industry.

You can probably blame Microsoft for organizing the party, but most of the players were going to party somewhere anyways.

[djdoo]

@bridgman:

Alright then can we just have Crossfire and XvMC support on either of the 3 drivers for now?(And the bugfixes for fglrx AGP HD problems and the rest)

And after that we can discuss DRM stuff with cleaner minds...