> Jensen Lee wrote:
> > Certainly I want to keep using my Sun Blade. Will
> Sun next commercial release of Solaris at least
> support the legacy 3D Labs cards?

> Because like every other computer company in the
> world, including Sun for
> the past 25 years, hardware is not supported forever
> and at some point you
> must choose between hardware upgrade or software
> upgrade?   Those cards

Let me understand Alan, why in 25 years of computing I never had this problem 
before. Windoze supports old hardware, Linux supports very old hardware.
Now I chose a very expensive platform, let say the Rolls Royce of workstations, 
10 years on they decide to stop selling leaded fuel, only green one. Do you 
think Rolls Royce would tell me my expensive car would no longer run because 
the fuel standard has changed or would they make it run with the new fuel? I 
have a 1998 Pentium II laptop that runs the latest versions of both WinXP and 
Linux!

Thanks God I am European and in Europe software patents are illegal, and for a 
very good reason, they hamper progress and integration to the detriment of the 
consumer.

Now, on the constructive side, I understand the financial problems Sun is going 
through right now, but there is a large user base who owns workstations with 3D 
labs based FBs that sooner or later will want to upgrade to OpenSolaris. If Sun 
keeps supporting their hardware they will remain Sun's customers and may pay 
for support licenses, a memory upgrade etc. But if you brick their 
workstations, chances are they will switch to a different hardware supplier as 
in the Intel/AMD market there is open competition.

What about the following options:

1) open the 3D Labs drivers in Europe where software patents even if existing 
are not enforceable, someone in Europe could pick up the work
2) include a binary package of both drivers (already available I believe) and 
Xsun, installable on OpenSolaris Sparc.
-- 
This message posted from opensolaris.org
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-discuss mailing list
opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org

Reply via email to