are-em-dash-are-eff-slash-dot
(or, How I Learned To Stop Steaming and Flame Slashdot Weenies In My .Plan)
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[note: my remarks are in brackets.]
Today's (11/29/02 3:50:17) Episode:
don't buy cards with closed source drivers (Score:4, Insightful)
by g4dget on Thursday November 28, @11:13PM (#4778764)
This is one of the many reasons you shouldn't buy cards with closed source
drivers:
"Except their Linux drivers. For reasons unknown, the recently released drivers
do an explicit check to see that they are running on "built by" hardware, and
exit if they find a "powered by" card."
What are some of the other reasons?
* Closed source drivers inhibit innovation. 3D graphics cards are really
powerful computers--if the software to drive them were open, people could
modify it to do other interesting things, not just one particular model of 3D
graphics.
[Let's begin with some basic bits of common sense. It is in nVidia/ATI/Matrox/
Bitboys's interest to demonstrate features that give them a competitive
advantage.
If it were feasible, say, to run Folding@Home, or perhaps that cancer thingy,
on your GeForce XP2K Ti5000, you'd bet your ass that nVidia marketroids would
be out, loudly proclaiming that their new graphics card can cure cancer. Think
about it.]
* Closed source drivers won't work with non-mainstream open source operating
systems. I want people to be able to experiment with new GUIs and new kernels,
not just keep building on top of a handful "mainstream" systems.
[Would you rather use drivers written by groups of people paid to know the
hardware architecture, and who work down the hall from the people who actually
created it? Would you like to get timely fixes if, say, it causes nuclear
winter when you run UT2K3?
Or would you like to have drivers written by a team of people who know only
what the docs say? People who won't fix a bug unless they hit it, too?]
* Binary-only drivers tend to stop working sooner or later. You end up having
to upgrade a perfectly working piece of hardware just because it isn't
supported with the latest Linux/X11 versions.
[As will open source drivers. Open source code, despite the much-spouted "open
source never dies" mantra, will die out if it lacks a self-sustaining number of
developers. Take a look at the DRI drivers for the 3dfx Voodoo series.]
* If you keep buying cards with binary-only drivers, you remove the incentive
for people to ship cards with open source drivers.
[No, you don't. Open source is easier on the card maker, because they don't
have to fling bits about. They just wait for some guy to buy a card and write
up drivers for it.]
--- And, later in the thread... ---
Re:don't buy cards with closed source drivers (Score:2)
by g4dget on Friday November 29, @02:14AM (#4779064)
> Oh, puhleeeze, can we please be done with that one now? Do you think if
> nVidia or ATI were forced to open source their chip designs
Who says anything about "forcing"? All I'm saying is: don't use closed source
drivers. In fact, most people get ATI or nVidia cards and don't even use the 3D
features.
[Yeeeees. That's why people buy $400 3D graphics accelerators. To blit
windows faster.]
> we'd get anything like the rate of progress we've seen over the last three
> years?
Open sourcing their drivers would not slow down the development of their
current Direct3D or OpenGL implementations. But it would enable and encourage
the development of alternative graphics systems, as well as other applications
for those cards. You have fallen into the Microsoft trap of thinking that
"innovation" just means doing the same old stuff a little better. Sorry, but
there are other kinds of innovation.
[Alternative graphics systems? That use the same instructions specifically
chosen to make OpenGL and Direct3D faster? I doubt it.]
> C'mon. The drivers have a lot of intellectual property in them, nVidia ones
> in particular (ironically, considering how much better they run under Linux).
What's your point? Bell Labs UNIX or Solaris also had a lot of intellectual
property in them, and that didn't keep people from creating open source
equivalents that work better than the original. There is nothing that makes
graphics drivers any different.
[Yes, there is. Operating systems run on general-purpose computers.
General-purpose computers are designed to be hacked. GPU drivers run on
computers designed to render sets of numbers and pictures into raster graphics.
They are designed to... render sets of numbers and pictures into raster
graphics. The drivers just break down Direct3D and OpenGL into primitive
graphics operations.]
Besides, the graphics cards manufacturers don't need to open source their
drivers; a full documentation of the hardware and GPU would be sufficient. Open
source developers can and will do the rest, probably better than the original
proprietary drivers.
[Full documentation of the hardware and GPU only go so far; many algorithms
used in 3D graphics are encumbered by patents (see: S3TC, DXT1, 3dfx's SLI and
T-buffering stuff). And if Mesa, et al. were so much better than ATI/nVidia's
home-grown solutions, wouldn't they use them instead?]