Linux OpenGL ABI discussion

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Thu, Sep 29, 2005 at 01:54:00PM -0400, Adam Jackson wrote:
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/dri-egl/2005-July/000565.html
> 
> In particular, Andy's response about why they're uninterested in a common 
> libGL is basically The Last Word on the subject.  It would require that 
> nvidia expend time, effort, and money to get to the same level of 
> functionality they already have.  This applies equally to any other IHV, and 
> to ISVs like XiG and SciTech too for that matter.  You can have whatever 
> opinion you like about that stance, but it's simply an economic reality.

And it's a we shouldn't care about their economic issues.  Giving them
a branding only if they play nice with the open source world is one of
the few powers we have.

And replacing system libraries is not something we can allow anyone.
It's totally reasonable to have different 3cards in the same systems
and they're supposed to work.  Where would be get if every scsi card
came with it's own scsi stack and you could just use one brand at a
time?  Sure, we can't forbid scsi vendors to do that, but we do
everything in out power to avoid it - quite sucessfully so far.