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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><title>LKML: Timothy Miller: Binary drivers, Open Graphics Project</title><link href="/css/message.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /><link href="/css/wrap.css" rel="alternate stylesheet" type="text/css" title="wrap" /><link href="/css/nowrap.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" title="nowrap" /><link href="/favicon.ico" rel="shortcut icon" /><script src="/js/simple-calendar.js" type="text/javascript"></script><script src="/js/styleswitcher.js" type="text/javascript"></script><link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="lkml.org : last 100 messages" href="/rss.php" /><link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="lkml.org : last messages by Timothy Miller" href="/groupie.php?aid=10512" /><script> var _paq = window._paq = window._paq || []; /* tracker methods like "setCustomDimension" should be called before "trackPageView" */ _paq.push(["setDoNotTrack", true]); _paq.push(["disableCookies"]); _paq.push(['trackPageView']); _paq.push(['enableLinkTracking']); (function() { var u="//m.lkml.org/"; _paq.push(['setTrackerUrl', u+'matomo.php']); _paq.push(['setSiteId', '1']); var d=document, g=d.createElement('script'), s=d.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; g.async=true; g.src=u+'matomo.js'; s.parentNode.insertBefore(g,s); })(); </script></head><body onload="es.jasper.simpleCalendar.init();" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td width="180" align="center"><a href="/"><img style="border:0;width:135px;height:32px" src="/images/toprowlk.gif" alt="lkml.org" /></a></td><td width="32">聽</td><td class="nb"><div><a class="nb" href="/lkml"> [lkml]</a> 聽 <a class="nb" href="/lkml/2005"> [2005]</a> 聽 <a class="nb" href="/lkml/2005/12"> [Dec]</a> 聽 <a class="nb" href="/lkml/2005/12/15"> [15]</a> 聽 <a class="nb" href="/lkml/last100"> [last100]</a> 聽 <a href="/rss.php"><img src="/images/rss-or.gif" border="0" alt="RSS Feed" /></a></div><div>Views: <a href="#" class="nowrap" onclick="setActiveStyleSheet('wrap');return false;">[wrap]</a><a href="#" class="wrap" onclick="setActiveStyleSheet('nowrap');return false;">[no wrap]</a> 聽 <a class="nb" href="/lkml/mheaders/2005/12/15/188" onclick="this.href='/lkml/headers'+'/2005/12/15/188';">[headers]</a>聽 <a href="/lkml/bounce/2005/12/15/188">[forward]</a>聽 </div></td><td width="32">聽</td></tr><tr><td valign="top"><div class="es-jasper-simpleCalendar" baseurl="/lkml/"></div><div class="threadlist">Messages in this thread</div><ul class="threadlist"><li class="root"><a href="/lkml/2005/12/15/188">First message in thread</a></li><li class="origin"><a href="">Timothy Miller</a></li></ul></td><td width="32" rowspan="2" class="c" valign="top"><img src="/images/icornerl.gif" width="32" height="32" alt="/" /></td><td class="c" rowspan="2" valign="top" style="padding-top: 1em"><table><tr><td><table><tr><td class="lp">Date</td><td class="rp" itemprop="datePublished">Thu, 15 Dec 2005 10:25:23 -0500</td></tr><tr><td class="lp">From</td><td class="rp" itemprop="author">Timothy Miller <></td></tr><tr><td class="lp">Subject</td><td class="rp" itemprop="name">Binary drivers, Open Graphics Project</td></tr></table></td><td></td></tr></table><pre itemprop="articleBody">The Open Graphics Project was mentioned in LKML, and an observer on<br />your list suggested that I comment. Please forgive me if what I say<br />is out of date or redundant. Also, I'm not subscribed, so please CC<br />me on anything you want me to see.<br /><br />Having been faced with Linux hardware-support challenges many times<br />myself, I've certainly thought of circumstances where allowing binary<br />drivers would be a good short-term solution, but I believe condoning<br />that is a slippery slope that will make our situation worse. I'm not<br />the kind of purist that believes all proprietary software is evil, but<br />Linux is great in large part because it's open source (and stays that<br />way because it's free software).<br /><br />I thought about mentioning stable ABI's, but it's been discussed to<br />death, and most people seem to realize it's a bad idea. The moment we<br />give old-school hardware vendors that opening is the moment we lose a<br />lot of ground in our progress towards ubiquitous free<br />software. It is this open source requirement for Linux that has<br />spawned so much innovation and sharing of ideas and is the only reason<br />why you can use so many x86-specific peripherals on a PowerPC<br />platforms.<br /><br />As for other graphics vendors like ATI and nVidia, I honestly don't<br />fault them for their business models. To them, it's far more<br />profitable to sell to Windows users, and Linux users are in such small<br />number by comparison that it likely costs them more to support us than<br />they make from selling us cards.<br /><br />So why don't ATI and nVidia just release specs so WE can write drivers<br />for them? Because their drivers are a significant part of their<br />competitive advantage. As a hardware designer, I always strive to<br />strike the best balance between software and hardware. Hardware costs<br />a lot of money to make, so when you can do something in software<br />instead without it being a burden on the system, that's what you<br />should do. For ATI and nVidia, exposing their register interfaces<br />would expose too much about the internal workings of their designs,<br />thereby giving away too much information to each other and other<br />competitors. It is the capitalist thing to do to compete in whatever<br />way makes the most sense. ATI and nVidia compete not just on what<br />their chips do but also HOW their chips do it; letting those secrets<br />out would be letting go of a major competitive advantage.<br /><br />With the help of the Open Graphics Project community, I and two<br />colleagues of mine have set out to develop open architecture graphics<br />hardware that can be used with just about any OS and just about any<br />architecture. We are the hardware vendor for the Open Graphics<br />Project and we call ourselves Traversal Technology. We have developed<br />a business model that we believe will allow us to do this.<br /><br />For Traversal Technology, the Open Graphics Project is an interesting<br />risk. To some extent, we can afford to do this, because we are small<br />and have integrated ourselves into the community to a huge degree. We<br />stand as a niche player, and based on that, we create a reasonable<br />business model. What will sell our products is the fact that they are<br />open architecture. Although the near-term business goals of ATI and<br />nVidia make sense, the future goes beyond just open source. It isn't<br />enough to just release source to your drivers. Other developers need<br />to be able to understand them and add support for features in your<br />hardware that you didn't. And they need to be able to use your<br />hardware in ways that you didn't anticipate. (I think that part's the<br />most fun!) Although I don't expect hardware vendors in the future to<br />release the internals of their hardware, as Traversal intends to do, I<br />do believe we'll reach a point where every piece of hardware we use<br />has published specs with sufficient detail that we can write good<br />drivers for them. That's the direction we need to be headed. Let's<br />not delay that inevitable outcome by giving hardware vendors an excuse<br />to slide back into the old ways of doing things.<br /><br />Someone pointed out to me that there was a subthread on LKML<br />pertaining to OGP's ability to compete with ATI and nVidia. It has<br />never been our goal to compete with them on raw speed. We're not<br />targeting gamers. This is not what "Joe Sixpack" wants, mostly<br />because Joe Sixpack doesn't know very much about graphics cards. This<br />card is intended for desktop and workstation users and to accelerate<br />the kinds of things that will be seen on Linux desktops in the near<br />future. (We may be the first graphics vendor to fully support EXA.) <br />We are not going to compete with other companies on raw 3D performance<br />because we do not have the manpower or money to do it. Instead, we<br />are carving out a niche in the graphics market for users who demand<br />that their OS of choice works trouble-free with all of their hardware,<br />which for us means open specifications and OSS drivers with full<br />support for all features available. Our goal is to produce one of the<br />few graphics cards on the market that you can plug into a Linux<br />workstation and have it "just work," with no broken drivers to hassle<br />with.<br /><br />If freedom is what you're all about, if you want to see the slippery<br />slope tilt in favor of Free Software, then you'll stop trying to give<br />exceptions to those who won't or can't play by our rules. Start<br />giving your support to those who do and will support Free Software in<br />the full spirit of Free Software and the community of cooperation,<br />sharing, and creativity that so many have worked so hard to create.<br />-<br />To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in<br />the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org<br />More majordomo info at <a href="http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html">http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html</a><br />Please read the FAQ at <a href="http://www.tux.org/lkml/">http://www.tux.org/lkml/</a><br /><br /></pre></td><td width="32" rowspan="2" class="c" valign="top"><img src="/images/icornerr.gif" width="32" height="32" alt="\" /></td></tr><tr><td align="right" valign="bottom"> 聽 </td></tr><tr><td align="right" valign="bottom">聽</td><td class="c" valign="bottom" style="padding-bottom: 0px"><img src="/images/bcornerl.gif" width="32" height="32" alt="\" /></td><td class="c">聽</td><td class="c" valign="bottom" style="padding-bottom: 0px"><img src="/images/bcornerr.gif" width="32" height="32" alt="/" /></td></tr><tr><td align="right" valign="top" colspan="2"> 聽 </td><td class="lm">Last update: 2005-12-15 16:29 聽聽 [from the cache]<br />漏2003-2020 <a href="http://blog.jasper.es/"><span itemprop="editor">Jasper Spaans</span></a>|hosted at <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=9a8e99d24cf9">Digital Ocean</a> and my Meterkast|<a href="http://blog.jasper.es/categories.html#lkml-ref">Read the blog</a></td><td>聽</td></tr></table><script language="javascript" src="/js/styleswitcher.js" type="text/javascript"></script></body></html>