[Openchrome-users] VIA Announces Open Source Driver Initiative

[Xavier Bachelot]

pcpa at mandriva.com.br wrote:
> Quoting Xavier Bachelot <xavier at bachelot.org>:
> 
>> Felipe Reyes wrote:
>>> hi,
>>>
>>> El mar, 08-04-2008 a las 22:49 +0000, Mart?n Carr escribi?:
>>>> I am sure you have read this:
>>>> http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/08/04/08/202227.shtml
>>> [snip]
>>>
>>> yeah!, I'm almost happy, because k8m800 chipset will have no support (i
>>> hope that will be added in the near future), i think that the openchrome
>>> dev team have done an amazing job, so if via will work _with_ the
>>> community this driver will grow up faster, especially if the
>>> mesa/dri/drm stack gets a unichrome mantainer.
>>>
>>> Xavier, what do you think about this announcement?, because you said in
>>> some mail the incapacity of work with the community (like release .rar
>>> files)
>>>
>> Making an announcement is one thing, working with the community and by the
>> community rules, especially given their past history, is another. 
>> It's not the
>> first time VIA make such an announcement. Afaik, they did not contact anyone
>> from the X community before making it. That said, I'll give them the 
>> benefit of
>> the doubt, but I'll trust them when I see some facts, not some marketing hot
>> air. I certainly want to believe this time will be the good one, but talk is
>> cheap...
> 
>   Hopefully this time they will get it right. At least due to the fact
> that now intel and amd are releasing specs, they should not fear so
> much people "robbing" their IP... But they need to have more integration
> with Xorg and/or openchrome people.
> 
Indeed, this the main reason why the VIA provided driver is a disaster. 
They are not integrating with anything. They fix bug and do some 
development on their side and never send a patch upstream...

>   I worked recently with a OEM for a "olpc like" computer that has VX800
> chipset, and only after almost 2 month telling that it was not working,
> we managed to have someone from VIA in the "mail loop".
>   Then more one month with their binary only driver, trying all options
> from the the latest sources available at www.viaarena.com with
> no success. I even did some experiments dumping and hacking the vga
> video bios...
>   The final solution was an xorg.conf option added to their latest binary
> only driver, and they telling us to not look at the sources from viaarena
> because it is outdated :-)
>
You had a painful experience of working with VIA under a commercial 
contract. Now thing about doing the same when you do not have a contract 
with them...

We are trying to write a proposal to VIA to help smoothen the 
relationship with the community. Would you like to participate and send 
us your ideas ?

Regards,
Xavier