[ale] NVIDIA cards and drivers

[Marvin Dickens]

On Wed, 2003-05-28 at 16:01, ChangingLINKS.com wrote:

> That would change with the support and an endorsement from the Linux 
> community. The LC (doesn't that sound cool?) writes code (and supports 
> features) as needed. The ATI code can be seen as a starting point, with the 
> community contributing code until all features are supported 

The problem with this is a practical one from the perspective of the
people at ati (As well as Nvidia and every other custom silicon video
chip mfg'er) is that open sourcing the chip set basically open sources
the api. If you *really* know the structure of the api as well as all
hooks, you can hack it and determine the gate structure to the rendering
engine. So, in other words, if you can map the gate structure to the
chip, you literally open sourced your silicon. Clones of your chips
would emerge from Asia like mushrooms after a warm spring rain. Your
market would dilute along with the price of your chips and cards. You
would not have the money to budget another bout of R&D to produce a
better/faster chip set: You'd be screwed.


Best

M. Dickens

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