Re: New licence and driver SDK ?

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 12:00:19PM -0800, Alan Coopersmith wrote:
> Nicolas Boulay wrote:
> >It avoid proprietary fork. It avoid to close the code add 1% of line, make 
> >it uncompatible to keep your customers. That's exactly what append to 
> >spice (a cad tools, used everywhere but each version is incompatible).
> 
> Unfortunately, in today's graphics market, preventing that means
> preventing companies from providing drivers for their boards since
> they don't want their trade secrets made public.  You have the choice
> of not supporting those practices if you don't mind not getting all
> the performance out of your hardware that you paid for when you bought
> it, but applying the GPL to an X distribution takes that choice away
> from everyone who uses it.

Notice, that since the graphic card vendors don't care about anything
but the mainstream market, this is a lost cause anyway. At least i have
no chance of seeing a modern graphic card working in my powerpc box, not
of getting 3D graphic support in any current powerbook.

So, maybe going all GPL in this way, and telling clearly the hardware
vendors to either give the specs, and provide true free drivers, or
forget about the linux market, would not be such a bad idea.

Maybe we are not there yet, maybe it is too early, but in the end it
will come to that. It will only take a significant enough linux (or
other free/open/whatever) market, and one single player to decide to go
the open route, and then we will be there. But maybe today we are not
ready for that.

It took us what, twenty years or so, to achieve what we have on the
software side, the next big challenge will be the hardware market, not
only the graphic hardware market, but all of it.

Friendly,

Sven Luther
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