After takin' a swig o' grog, JEDIDIAH belched out
this bit o' wisdom:
> On 2009-02-12, Hadron <hadronquark@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> But for the record : why the hell SHOULD they give their source away?
>
> In this day in age it's expected. If they sell you a piece of hardware
> then they should provide all that is needed for getting it to work with
> the system that it's going to be plugged into. Gone are the days when
> you would expect to fork over an extra 50 buck for the device driver
> for the dominant OS in the marketplace.
>
>> The source reveals their APIs which in turn reveals a LOT about their HW
>> design. I'm with NVidia all the way on this and they can count on my
>> cash because they do provide EXCELLENT Linux support.
>
> Hmmm... can't program the chip without having enough fundemental
> understanding of the product that you can effectively reverse engineer
> it. That's a rather fascinating idea there.
It's tough work, though:
http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/FeatureMatrix
I don't get Nvidia's attitude, however.
First, they'll sell even more cards if they open up their source code.
Second, isn't their stuff protected by patents? And, in the U.S., by the
friggin' DMCA? It's not clear that they get any more protection if they
also provide the source code.
--
For some reason a glaze passes over people's faces when you say
"Canada". Maybe we should invade South Dakota or something.
-- Sandra Gotlieb, wife of the Canadian ambassador to the U.S.
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