Vendor support (was Re: The ati petition)

[Hamie]

Lee Revell wrote:

>On Sun, 2004-09-05 at 07:40, Alan Cox wrote:
>  
>
>>On Sul, 2004-09-05 at 01:41, Lee Revell wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>The drivers are open source.  Are you saying we should make a
>>>distinction between open source drivers written under NDA and open
>>>source drivers written from freely available docs?
>>>      
>>>
>>Yes
>>    
>>
>
>OK.  Something like (in declining order of desirability)
>
>full source with free (speech) docs
>full source with NDA docs
>full source, no docs
>obfuscated source
>reverse engineered
>binary only
>nothing
>
>seems reasonable.  Did I miss anything?
>
>  
>

Full docs alone... I'd personally put it between "full source with free 
(speech) docs" and "full source, no docs"... With full docs we can get 
drivers if we really want them. I put it behind the docs & source 
because after all more is better. I put it ahead of source & NDA docs, 
because with docs EVERYONE can fix problems. (Unless anyone can get the 
docs by just signing the NDA of course. I've been down that one before 
where a vendor was happy to give the docs out to OSS developers, you 
just neede to say yuou'd keep them to yourself. It meant you couldn't 
pass them on, but you could direct anyone else who wanted where to get 
them from).


>>>Seems to me the meaningful distinction here is between open source and
>>>binary only.
>>>      
>>>
>>You've never tried fixing a bug have you ?
>>
>>    
>>
>
>I certainly have, most recently in the emu10k1 ALSA driver.  Having the
>docs would not have helped.  I just meant that as far as the ATI issue
>is concerned, that open source drivers written from NDA docs would
>address many people's complaints.
>
>  
>

Yes, agreed. As long as someone had the docs. I'd prefer a time limit on 
the NDA though... I don't see why they should be kept secret forever.

H

>Lee
>
>
>
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