Rant about ATI

[Russell Shaw]

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.

It will only take one open-source graphics card with published pcb layout
or a kit available to give X the full flexibility it needs. Then those binary
parasites can be ditched when a developer takes X in a new direction.