Google want to opensource gfx drivers

[Davros]

thought you'd be interested in this
" "I would love to get either NVIDIA and ATI to actually give us the specs on the drivers we want or let's just reverse engineer everything and do it ourselves."

http://www.phoronix.com/?page=news_item&px=NTg0MA

 

[Anarchist4000]

Kind of wondering what Google is up to. First they buy Peakstream. Now they want the drivers open sourced? I thought I read something about AMD possibly open sourcing their drivers a while back but not sure what happened to that.

Now we just need to wait for Google to acquire AMD, create their own linux based OS, then start marketing their own computer platform and OS. Taking out Apple while they're at it.

 

[Skrying]

Apple would buy Google before that happens.

 

[Tim Murray]

Kind of wondering what Google is up to. First they buy Peakstream. Now they want the drivers open sourced? I thought I read something about AMD possibly open sourcing their drivers a while back but not sure what happened to that.

No, Chris DiBona wants the drivers open-sourced. There is a huge, huge difference there.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Apple would buy Google before that happens.

That would be a neat trick.

 

[nutball]

Kind of wondering what Google is up to.

Public relations

"Public relations (PR) is the managing of outside communication of an organization or business to create and maintain a positive image. Public relations[1] involves popularizing successes, downplaying failures, announcing changes, and many other activities.

It may for example include identifying a common meme amongst a group of potential customers or individuals and then making public statements intended to reinforce a positive image of the company and gain mind-share amongst those individuals. One recent instance of this would be the statements made by a Google employee regarding the open-sourcing of graphics drivers for the Linux operating system, a long-time parallel-Universe-la-la-land wish of the open source community. Such statements are intended to perpetuate the myth that Google is one of the good guys, and whilst painting other companies into the bad guy mould (it's important to have a bad guy to blame when trying to look like the good guy, as any totalitarian dictator who knows their trade will tell you). These statements can be made safe in the knowledge that they'll cause a melt-down on Slashdot, and that Google will never be called upon to actually do anything to back up such claims, continuing to lay the blame on the GPU vendors. Google just gets free love for nothing."

Now we just need to wait for Google to acquire AMD, create their own linux based OS, then start marketing their own computer platform and OS. Taking out Apple while they're at it.

*ca-ching*

 

[Nick]

I think that it's important to enhance the desktop.

What you really need for that is standardized tests. That's all. Let ATI and NVIDIA develop (closed) drivers that conform to these tests and reward them with an LHQL label they can put on the boxes.

Open drivers would just cause a total mess of alpha and beta drivers released by amateurs, and I mean that in the pejorative sense (*). IHV's don't want to be associated with such mess nor these amateurs.

(*) If somebody feels personally offended by that, I suggest they contact ATI or NVIDIA for a position in the Linux driver team and save the world...

 

[karlotta]

Apple would buy Google before that happens.

?
not even in the same league...

 

[Skrying]

?
not even in the same league...

It was a poke at all the buying nonsense you hear these days since AMD bought ATi...

 

[zsouthboy]

(*) If somebody feels personally offended by that, I suggest they contact ATI or NVIDIA for a position in the Linux driver team and save the world...

HAHAHAHA.

Because the problem with their driver teams on Linux right now is that they're not talented enough.

 

[nutball]

Because the problem with their driver teams on Linux right now is that they're not talented enough.

<------------- the point



30000 feet (10000m)





<------------- your head

 

[Sound_Card]

Google is going to make video games with ads in them.

 

[poopypoo]

Now we just need to wait for Google to acquire AMD, create their own linux based OS, then start marketing their own computer platform and OS. Taking out Apple while they're at it.

Holy crap I just creamed my pants!

 

[Nite_Hawk]

Open drivers would just cause a total mess of alpha and beta drivers released by amateurs, and I mean that in the pejorative sense (*). IHV's don't want to be associated with such mess nor these amateurs.

(*) If somebody feels personally offended by that, I suggest they contact ATI or NVIDIA for a position in the Linux driver team and save the world...

I totally agree. It's pretty obvious that Intel made a huge mistake by open sourcing their linux drivers. Just look at the mess they've caused! And you only need to examine the state of ATI's closed proprietary drivers and intel's open source ones to know who's going to be winning the hearts of the linux community. Boy, I bet Intel feels stupid now. They'll be lucky if they can get anyone to use their graphics solutions now that they have the "amateur" stigma.

Nite_Hawk

 

[zsouthboy]

<------------- the point



30000 feet (10000m)





<------------- your head

Feel free to enlighten me.

 

[Tim Murray]

I totally agree. It's pretty obvious that Intel made a huge mistake by open sourcing their linux drivers. Just look at the mess they've caused! And you only need to examine the state of ATI's closed proprietary drivers and intel's open source ones to know who's going to be winning the hearts of the linux community. Boy, I bet Intel feels stupid now. They'll be lucky if they can get anyone to use their graphics solutions now that they have the "amateur" stigma.

Does anyone really care what the average Linux zealot thinks? You could open source drivers that crash every five seconds and they'd love them. You could have closed source drivers that were so good they opened a wormhole to get frames from the future and they'd hate them. That is the absolute make-or-break issue, not driver quality or anything like that.

The average Linux zealot isn't really buying much hardware; zealots don't get to be CTOs or anything like that.

 

[Nite_Hawk]

Does anyone really care what the average Linux zealot thinks? You could open source drivers that crash every five seconds and they'd love them. You could have closed source drivers that were so good they opened a wormhole to get frames from the future and they'd hate them. That is the absolute make-or-break issue, not driver quality or anything like that.

The average Linux zealot isn't really buying much hardware; zealots don't get to be CTOs or anything like that.

Yeah, those linux zealots sure are stupid. They're all mindless fanboys and they'll never make any money and they'll never be CEOs and they'll never get girlfriends. They should just go die somewhere, no one likes them and they smell funny.

Nite_Hawk

 

[Nick]

Feel free to enlighten me.

Too many people think they could do better than the IHV's driver teams. But those actually competent enough likely already work in these teams. The few who are competent enough but don't yet work in these teams would do us a bigger favor by contacting the IHV's for a position instead of working on open drivers.

Anyway, the drivers themselves are probably not the biggest problem. Here's a must read: The State of Linux Graphics. Instead of pointing fingers at the closed drivers they'd better first take care of the rest. Then they have to make it easier for the IHV's to deliver good drivers (good specifications, conformance tests, etc), and actually give them a reason to care.

 

[Aerows]

Does anyone really care what the average Linux zealot thinks? You could open source drivers that crash every five seconds and they'd love them. You could have closed source drivers that were so good they opened a wormhole to get frames from the future and they'd hate them. That is the absolute make-or-break issue, not driver quality or anything like that.

The average Linux zealot isn't really buying much hardware; zealots don't get to be CTOs or anything like that.

Who on earth do you think is running the majority of your servers? The idiot W2K "admin"/"developer" or UNIX background people?

Do you have any idea just how frightening the thought of running MS products on the front end of *any* network is to the average Network Engineer?

That's about as likely as finding a checkpoint firewall using Windows 98.

Oh wait, some of those people occasionally have a bit of influence in regard to hardware choices, simply because they are the ones often responsible for influencing purchasing decisions, integrating products and/or fixing whatever aspect of the whole technology base that breaks when no one in the company has any idea how to do so.

 

[Tim Murray]

Who on earth do you think is running the majority of your servers? The idiot W2K "admin"/"developer" or UNIX background people?

Who do you think is buying the majority of products--the guy who doesn't care what he gets so long as it accomplishes his goal or the guy who thinks that open source is better than all alternatives because it's Free with a capital F?

Hint: it's not the latter. That's what I'm talking about with regards to zealots, not people who simply like *nix (I type this from Ubuntu because I have no reason to run Windows on this machine).

edit: why the hell am I being lectured about Linux? I installed Slackware 2 off of floppies, for fuck's sake!