On Tue, November 23, 2004 1:35 pm, Bill G said: > I suspect Nvidia is about as likely to open source its 3D code as > Microsoft is to open source Windows, perhaps less. That's the price Microsoft is already bowing to pressure and has what it calls its Shared-Source program: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/default.mspx Where the Windows source is provided to key customers. Also they've recently fully open-sourced some of their non-OS code and made it available on sourceforge. > they perceive for working with the Linux community on open source > Nvidia drivers: Zillions of dirt cheap Nvidia knockoff cards using > that open sourced code, collapsing Nvidia sales, and miniscule sales > to the Linux folks. Hard to believe this is really the case; it's not so easy to reverse engineer all the hardware required to run this code. Seems more likely they're just boxed in by legal entanglements of their own. It probably doesn't help that they have such a tight relationship with Microsoft either. > A better approach might be to recognize that 3D is not needed for most > day-to-day home, SOHO and corporate desktop work. In fact, the extra > cost that 3D adds to a card is just empty expense for those markets. > These people stare at monitors all day; what they want are great 2D > displays. Work with Nvidia to improve the nv driver to deliver the > best possible 2D display. Forget about the gamers. Gamers will go > where the games are. While you're absolutely correct about the situation today, things are changing. The 3D desktop is just around the corner, Microsoft has Longhorn and there are similar efforts on Linux (see http://wwws.sun.com/software/looking_glass for a basic example). In the not so distant future, 3D cards will become ubiquitous and it doesn't hurt to start thinking about what this means for open source now. Currently, Intel's roadmap is the greatest reason for hope that we'll have increased access to good 3D hardware which is fully supported by open-source. Companies like Nvidia may indeed come around but the situation today isn't ideal. It would be much easier for distributions to support 3D out of the box if more manufacturers open sourced their drivers. Time will tell. Sean
