[linux-audio-dev] Re: Behringer

Fernando Lopez-Lezcano nando at ccrma.Stanford.EDU
Thu Dec 2 02:22:33 UTC 2004


On Wed, 2004-12-01 at 17:48, Paul Davis wrote:
> >The point is not that someone might reverse engineer and do a
> >worse/better oss driver. The point is that nvidia, ati, xgi, matrox
> >*should* do open source drivers.
> 
> The point is that nobody has persuaded them of this, and in the matrox
> case, they actually went backwards, from our perspective. 

Not only Matrox, ATI as well. Radeon > 9200 (the latest I'm using) means
a binary driver for acceleration. 

> These
> companies cannot be shown to be incorrect, all we can say is that they
> have a different perspective on the world than we do. Their different
> perspective might make you want to boycott them, or try to change
> their minds. If boycott is your thing, end of story.
> 
> Otherwise, given the apparent absence of a benign, GPL-friendly deity
> who will change their minds on our behalf, the question would seem to
> be can they be convinced, and if so how? Does anybody think that the
> attitude that Marek and Dave R. have offered might work? I, for one,
> do not. Actually, I am not actually sure that they can be convinced,
> which makes it all a bit irrelevant.

Not sure either. 

The only thing I can think of is trying to find contacts inside the
companies that may be more friendly to open source and also have some
influence at the management or marketing level. No easy, if at all
possible. Probably the larger the company the more difficult this
approach would be. 

I would like to know if that is the case currently (meaning dealing with
internal contacts for the successful cases), for some reason I seem to
think that most specs have been released to individuals who in turn
write the drivers, sometimes with an nda to not disclose the
documentation itself. 

-- Fernando





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