On Sun, Apr 23, 2006 at 08:06:01AM +0900, Miles Bader wrote: > "Manaen Schlabach" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > It seems like everyone agrees that Video card manufacturers really > > don't want to give up their 3d stuff and that seems to be the primary > > reason we can't get a "good" open source driver. > > S, sowhat exactly is in the video card drivers they're so paranoid > about? I know pretty well how modern graphics _hardware_ works, and > software, but I'm not exactly sure what's in this disputed layer. > > Obviously, the nuts and bolts of sending data to hardware (various > protocols for talking to hardware), but that's fairly uninteresting, and > it would be silly for them to feel a need to "protect" it. > > So... what's the "interesting" stuff in the driver that they're trying > to protect? Texture management?
I think the 'interesting' stuff is the nuts and botls of sending data, because I think they're afraid someone will reverse-engineer their board from that info and turn around a cheaper model that does the exact same thing. -- Christopher Nelson -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- It is the business of the future to be dangerous. -- Hawkwind -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]