The Fallacy Behind Open-Source GPU Drivers, Documentation

[DanL]

Nah, they will just call you a liar or a troll or some other shit.

If you're not intentionally lying and/or trolling, then you sorely need to improve your reading comprehension (or stop posting).

[mirv]

If you're not intentionally lying and/or trolling, then you sorely need to improve your reading comprehension (or stop posting).

To be fair in this particular case, if he didn't realise the history and didn't know that Bridgman was referring to history, not current events, I can see how it might have been ambiguous.
So misunderstanding fixed hopefully.

[bug77]

All I need is a proper driver, FOSS or not

And instead you chose to buy ATI and then complain about it. Nice.

[pingufunkybeat]

I realised that perhaps you didn't know some of the history - if you dig hard enough, you might find "ancient" posts on Phoronix, but the community wanting the programming docs goes back to before then. I remember the r200 driver days with the radeon8500 - those drivers were fast (really fast!) - the r200 mostly worked, and ATI wasn't supporting consumer cards (blob or otherwise), hence the community wanting docs so they could take of everything.
Others, feel free to fill in any gaps in my knowledge here, or correct where I'm mistaken!

I remember the discussions on slashdot back when the first GeForce cards were appearing. Back in those days, 3d chips were not that complex and this made sense.

The reality is that the 3d hardware has advanced a lot since then, and is the second most complex piece of hardware in your computer -- after the CPU. Perhaps even more complex than that.

There are hundreds of companies funding linux kernel development, and only a handful of people working on 3d drivers. That is the true problem. I think that AMD's approach is correct here -- release the documentation, release the initial code as a proof of concept, and let the community deal with it.

The problem is that there are not enough people in the community to take care of it. RedHat is doing a great thing by funding devs to work on 3d drivers, but there need to be more. Another 10 paid developers who know what they are doing would go a long way. Ideally the people who are hacking on the drivers in their spare time right now. Drop 60k on one of them for a year, and let him bite into it, and you should see some improvement.

[bug77]

Now this is a decent reply. Thank you.

I posted based on what Bridgman stated. There is no way of deducing from Bridgman's post that that which you explained. At least not by me. Again, thanks.

FWIW I read it the same way Mirv did. The word "refuse" does not appear in Bridgman's post.

[fithisux]

No fallacy but lack of standardization

Standardize GFX like USB mass storage. One driver fits all.

[BlackStar]

the problem are distris who are leeching. Like Ubuntu.Novell, Redhat and Mandriva can't pay for everything.

You forgot a few other leechers such as Debian and Gentoo.

[BlackStar]

Standardize GFX like USB mass storage. One driver fits all.

Ugh, yeah right. That was a good one

[pingufunkybeat]

You forgot a few other leechers such as Debian and Gentoo.

Debian and Gentoo take nothing, and only give. Each of these distros contributes more code to the community than Canonical.

Debian and Gentoo are non-profit, volunter run. Canonical has 350 employees and $30M in revenue each year.

You are confusing some things here.

[dfx.]

and where from the "surplus" of open-source graphic driver developers should be coming from if they have no ground to bread, so to speak ? you know, without docs, and it's not like they teach you basics of hardware for accelerated graphical computation in universities anywhere.
docs for "simple" modern cards like stuff from VIA would be a great example. but nooo, we have 2 giants representing graphical hardware for entire planet and few little shady establishments trying to imitate them or something.

threshold of entry kinda freaking high on this and it will stay that way while this situation persists. and graphic companies managers like it that way, i think.