Questions drivers for VGA and NIC

[Da Rock]

On Thu, 2008-10-02 at 07:26 -0400, Jerry wrote:
> On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 14:36:26 -0800
> Henrik Hudson <lists at rhavenn.net> wrote:
> 
> >On Wednesday 01 October 2008, Jerry <gesbbb at yahoo.com> sent a missive
> >stating: 
> >> On Wed, 1 Oct 2008 23:25:19 +0200 (CEST)
> >>
> >> Wojciech Puchar <wojtek at wojtek.tensor.gdynia.pl> wrote:
> >> >> In all likelihood, the probability of any vendor creating FBSD
> >> >> specific drivers is directly proportionate to the expenditure of
> >> >> funds to create and maintain the driver versus the expected
> >> >> revenue from such an expenditure.
> >> >
> >> >giving out a specs will be the simplest way.
> >>
> >> Any entity, or corporation, has a right to expect a return on their
> >> investment. To expect a corporation to simply give away something,
> >> thereby depriving their shareholders, partners or whatever, of their
> >> rightfully expected monetary reward is foolish. It certainly is not a
> >> well thought out  business model.
> >
> >There is a difference between open sourcing the binary blob and
> >possibly giving away optimizations, trade secrets, etc... and allowing
> >easier access to either hardware register specs or specs to write a
> >wrapper around a universal blob.
> >
> >Personally, I think they see it as a "quality" control issue, though
> >the quality of their own code is sometimes circumspect. The card
> >companies sell hardware and this is where their money is made and/or a
> >better experience with the software drivers. Open the hardware spec,
> >add a support clause that any "open source" drivers aren't officially
> >supported and you're good to go.
> 
> Unfortunately, that is not a legally binding disclaimer in many
> locales. It is equivalent to wearing a T-Shirt with "Touch me and I'll
> kill you" embroidered on it. If someone touches you and you kill them
> you cannot then claim that they were fore warned. That is from an
> actual lecture I receive in a business class.
> 
> >Opening the hardware spec will do nothing except sell more hardware.
> 
> Unproven and if it were in factually correct, more businesses would
> make use of it.
> 
> >a) the average joe will continue to buy systems with the supported
> >hardware / drivers, most likely Windows, OS X or a major Linux distro.
> >Probably wouldn't even know the open source ones exist.
> 
> A bit naive in my personal opinion. The overwhelming majority of users
> that I am acquainted with and many of them are college students, buy
> what ever works best for them with the least amount of user
> intervention. The  majority of users that I am familiar with do not
> want to spent valuable time attempting to configure a PC; they have
> better things to do. How many discussions have we had on this forum
> regarding the lack of a functional 'Flash' plug-in for web browsing,
> etc. Until problems like that are solved, expanding the base for FBSD
> is a touch uphill climb.
> 
> >b) the geeks of the world will start running the open source driver if
> >it's better or not if it's worse for their applications. Either way,
> >it will only sell more hardware.
> 
> Again, unproven.
> 
> >c) The FOSS only crowd will start using the hardware since it has a
> >fully open source drivers.
> >
> >The open source driver doesn't need to be able to run Doom5 at
> >incredible speeds, it just needs high quality 2d and the ability to
> >handle some 3d compositing, etc... for desktop effects.
> 
> Sorry; however, I totally disagree. A half-ass driver is akin to being
> slightly pregnant. You are either pregnant or you are not. A driver is
> either fully functional, or it is broken. To make arbitrary limits on
> what it should and should not be able to do is absurd. If I want to
> play a game, and your half-ass driver will not run it, then that driver
> is as useless as 'Tits on a bull'. It either works, or it doesn't. Too
> many people today accept inferior products/performance under just the
> guise you are employing.
> 
> >My .02$
> >
> >Henrik
> 
> Again, it appears that NVIDIA has attempted to work with the FBSD
> community. Evidently, nothing has come of it. Unfortunate, to say the
> least.

I apologise for jumping into this thread mid way, but wouldn't the
problem be simply a case of nil NDA? If an FOSS programmer signed an NDA
with say NVidia, then wouldn't the hardware supplier be more willing to
supply more specific details?

Anyone with experience in the legalities here?