On Mon, Jan 12, 2004 at 10:18:06AM +0100, Sven Luther wrote: > > > Not to mention the fact that the last video card to have free 3D support > > > was the Radeon 8500/9000/9100/9200, and that we are pretty unlikely to > > > get anything else in the near future. And both ATI and Nvidia don't > > > provide anything else than x86 executables.
On Mon, Jan 12, 2004 at 08:24:41AM -0500, Raul Miller wrote: > > Depends on what you mean by "near future". > > > > Take a look at point 267 at > > http://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/develsnaps/changelog-4.3.99.8.txt > > > > How near that is depends on how many of Branden's changes will be included > > in the 4.4 release, and of course when 4.4 itself is released. On Mon, Jan 12, 2004 at 09:13:14PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote: > Well, i am also an, altough not very active lately, XFree86 upstream, > and i have been in contact with ATI professionally to try to get specs > for a closed source ppc OS 3D drivers for the R300 family of cards, so > i know what i speak from. I don't see what you mean by quoting the above > changelog, please be a bit more specific. I've seen open offers of help from ATI to anyone writing Xfree86 drivers. But let's take this to private email. [I'm writing you a separate message with the details.] > > [Also, ATI provides source. That source isn't redistributable, and > > comes in an rpm package, and might have x86 dependencies, but it's > > source nonetheless.] > > Are those more than just a wrapper stuff around a bunch of binary-only > drivers like the nvidia ones ? Yes. They provide precompiled binaries for that source [modules for certain prebuilt kernels], but the source itself seems to be complete. > Well at least they are based on the XFree86 accel architecture and DRI, > unlike Nvidia, but i doubt there is interest on ATIs side to free this > source code. If they bought part of it from someone else, they might not have that as an option -- at least not one they can afford. -- Raul
