VIA Joins The Open Driver Bandwagon

Announced this morning at the second annual Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit is a new open-source driver development initiative. VIA Technologies has announced its strategic open-source driver development initiative. VIA will be providing technical specifications, source-code, and other information regarding their latest products. In addition, they'll be opening a new web-site devoted to its new Linux efforts.

VIA's initial open-source push is occurring for their VIA CN700, CX700/M, CN896, and the new VIA VX800 chipsets. Topping off their open-source kindness, VIA will be providing enabling the open-source community to provide 2D, 3D, and video playback acceleration using its integrated graphics processors.

Their new Linux website is linux.via.com.tw/, but this page won't be live until later this month.

VIA's commitment to Linux and the open-source community isn't a one night stand either, but according to VIA they will implement a quarterly release schedule of its new Linux offerings that align with kernel and distribution refreshes.

At the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, VIA's Timothy Chen commented that they kick-started their open-source efforts after seeing Intel's open-source involvement especially with their Moblin project. What else is next for VIA? Perhaps knowledge base software?

VIA is just the latest hardware company better enabling the Linux and open-source communities by providing technical documentation on their products and supporting an open-source driver. This bandwagon for the past few months has really been led by Intel with their complete 965/G35 documentation (on top of their long-standing support of various open-source projects and drivers) and AMD who has been releasing documentation left and right in supporting two open-source graphics drivers. Creative Labs has also turned more open-source friendly with their once notorious X-Fi series. NVIDIA, it's now your turn to show your strategy as we've been exclusively reporting for the past few months.