Rant about ATI

[Marek Wawrzyczny]

On Wednesday 09 August 2006 17:26, Miles Bader wrote:
> Marek Wawrzyczny <marekw1977 at yahoo.com.au> writes:
> > If *nux had an equal or majority of the desktop market share (I am
> > allowed to dream), hardware manufacturers (of consumer grade products)
> > would  not hesitate to put money into drivers and we wouldn't really
> > bother to have this
> >
>   > discussion :)
>
> Er, yes we would because: (1) many people do not like closed-source
> drivers, even if some (like you) tolerate them; and more importantly
> (2) closed-source drivers tend to suck in general, and are a maintenance
> nightmare (bit-rot, herrrre we come!).
>
> However, if linux had a large share of the "market", the stupid
> attitudes of many manufacturers would probably change for the better.
> Currently it seems due more to knee-jerk conservativism and clueless
> management/legal-departments than anything else; there's just not
> enough money at risk to force them to actually think about the issue for
> more than 3 seconds.

Well put, I wholeheartedly agree. I can also understand the dislike for closed 
source drivers but the point I am trying to make is that for the end user 
there is often no choice but to use a closed source driver.

Also, I was under the impression that the X.Org group needs more developers. 
If closed source drivers dissapeared overnight, would the sudden influx of 
requests for hardware support slow down the development of other strategic 
parts of X like the modular development, Xgl, etc? Or maybe it would result 
in reduced hardware support instead?


Marek Wawrzyczny