[Openchrome-users] 3d drivers and texture support

[Jon Nettleton]

On Wed, 2007-04-11 at 21:17 +0200, Luc Verhaegen wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 11, 2007 at 02:34:14PM -0400, Jon Nettleton wrote:
> > 
> > I have been working with Fiona as a contact for VIA's Open Source
> > development group for the past 5 months.  During that time we have
> > started implementing a plan to help better integrate their organizations
> > work with that of the Open Source community.  One of their concerns was
> > that so many developers requesting NDA's and information would be a
> > drain on their internal resources.  To help alleviate this we have
> > agreed to get a few of our more main stay developers to be put under NDA
> > and triage questions from the open source community.  Currently Gabriel
> > Mansi and myself are cleared to receive NDA's so we can receive
> > datasheets and help answer questions the community members have.  VIA
> > has also provided us with contact to two of their Open Source developers
> > if we need further support.
> > 
> > This work with VIA is definitely going in a positive direction, although
> > probably a bit slower than most Open Source developers like.  They have
> > agreed to try and adopt all freedesktop.org coding standards into their
> > own release of the driver to make it easier for upstream merges and
> > re-use of code by openchrome.org.  Their intent is to get this done for
> > the next release of their Open Source graphics driver, but couldn't
> > guarantee it.
> > 
> > Both sides of the collaboration are working hard to make this a win-win
> > situation.  I can only ask that all the members of the openchrome.org
> > community bear with us as we work out all the kinks in the communication
> > process.
> > 
> > Jon Nettleton
> 
> History repeating, as this really smells like the VIA & EPIOS story all 
> over again: http://www.via.com.tw/en/company/events/vtf2006/agenda.jsp
> 
> Check out where epios is today at http://www.epios.net/
> 
> Apart from that, Jon, i do feel that you're wasting your time and that 
> you're just going to be led in circles. If this does slightly work out, 
> VIA will use you as a marketing gimmick after which it will forget about 
> you altogether.
> 

Luc,

Thanks so much for your concern. Unfortunately when dealing with any
large company there are a lot of politics involved.  This is not
specific to VIA, it is just the "nature of the beast".

So far, VIA has acted nothing but amiably towards myself and the
openchrome.org community.  Both parties had concerns and intentions that
needed to be discussed before a compromise was reached.  I believe that
we have found a fantastic common ground to use as a jumping off point.
(How about that for middle management speak?  :-)  ).

Jon