[sf-lug] Hot From the Red Hat Press: AMD to Open Source ATI

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Adrien Lamothe (alamozzz at yahoo.com):

> ATI made it very clear, a couple of months ago, that they have no
> plans to open up the drivers. In their statement, they cited concerns
> over DRM as the reason to stay closed. AMD may have purchased ATI, but
> that doesn't mean they can completely dictate policy at ATI.
> 
> Intel opened up their graphics specs because they had nothing to lose
> and something to gain. ATI apparently thinks they will suffer a loss
> by opening specs to their graphics processors.

Thank you for that.  I certainly don't take personal offence at the
frantic PR spin (still) emerging from ATI/AMD, but it (still) shouldn't be
confused with anything real.

Something real might emerge from ATI in the future, but, in the
meantime, "Go, Intel i965!"

Flashback:  In 2000, Adaptec sent a delegation of engineers to
$BIG_LINUX_FIRM where I was working, seeking help learning how to work
with the open source community and improve the state of the Linux
drivers for their SCSI HBAs.  Now, you might ask, why would Adaptec need
to do this, when for years their announcements of support for Linux and
open source had been at least as fervent as ATI's are now?

Why?  Because those announcements had been bullshit, because Linux
sysadmins hadn't been fooled, and because Adaptec management noticed
massive mindshare loss in the small but vital Linux market to
Buslogic/Mylex, whose HBAs and kernel-mainline drivers worked better on
Linux.

There's a lesson there, somewhere.