[LUGargano] De Rerum Secretis

[Matteo Fasanella]

C'e` un pezzo di un articolo pubblicato ieri su LinuxToday:
http://www.linuxtoday.com/infrastructure/2006010701126NWEV
in cui "viene svelato" il motivo dello strano rapporto tra Linux e
schede grafiche 3D.

Riporto:

"I headed over to the press lunch, same crowd as yesterday but I did see
someone I had missed, graphics board manufacturer S3. I talked to one of
their reps (who gave the impression of being fairly senior in the
company), and he cast some interesting insight into the whole Linux
graphics driver issue. According to him, it's not an issue of revealing
cool high end features to the competition that is keeping them from
releasing the high-performance 3D drivers into the kernel. It's that the
drivers will reveal flaws in the hardware that could be used against
them by their competitors. According to him, all graphics chipset have
flaws in them, that it's inevitable given the complexity of the silicon.
The vendors code work-arounds in the drivers. By open sourcing the
driver, they would reveal their flaws to the other guys, and they could
use it as negative marketing ammo. On the other hand, he was not
antagonistic to the idea of open sourcing his Linux drivers, he just
needs to have a better grasp of what the upside would be for him to
doing it."