S3 has just released their Chrome S27 graphics chip, and cards are starting to become available. This brings them back into a competitive position with ATI and NVidia.
ATI and NVidia will not open-source their drivers for X.org, the open-source X server used on most Linux systems, nor will they publish documentation allowing third-party drivers to be written. NVidia seems outright hostile to open source, for reasons that are unclear. Both companies have claimed that they don’t want competitors to be able clone their chips, but neither an open source driver nor documentation would help that happen. Those graphics chips contain hundreds of millions of transistors, and knowing the register-level interface to the chip doesn’t make cloning easy. If it did, there would be many companies making Pentium 4 equivalent processors, because the x86 documentation is publicly available. But in actuality, only one company (AMD) has managed to make an x86 processor that can compete with Intel on performance, and they’ve taken many years and hundreds of millions of dollars to do it.
Via, S3′s parent company, has said that they will not release their X driver as open source, but according to a Linux Today article, the reason they give is that releasing source code would show their competitors the workarounds for flaws in their chips, which the competitors could use as marketing ammunition. They point out that all complex chips have flaws; Intel and AMD actually publish errata lists detailing the flaws in their processors, so it is not surprising that graphics chips should also have flaws.
However, IMNSHO it is silly to think that ATI or NVidia would do that, or that consumers would fall for it if they did. AMD and Intel don’t use each others’ errata lists for marketing deriding each others’ products. And if Intel said that you shouldn’t buy an AMD CPU because of some minor errata, wouldn’t you take that with a grain of salt, and question Intel about their own errata.
I think the real reason Via isn’t releasing the driver as open source is that keeping it closed is the path of least resistance. Until we (the open source community) convince them of the benefits to them of open source, it is easier for them to keep it closed, and make up silly reasons for doing so.
If they did release the drivers as open source, it would benefit them at least two major ways:
- They would capture a significant number of Linux and xBSD users that currently buy ATI and NVidia products because there is no open source alternative
- They would get third party developers contributing enhancements to the drivers back to them
As X and Linux users and developers, we should try to convince S3/Via that there is a lot of upside to open source for them, and very little downside.
I don’t know of any direct contacts at S3 or Via that we should contact, but it may make sense to send a polite email to their Sales and PR/Marketing departments. The email addresses are on their contacts page.
S3 should open-source the Linux drivers for their video cards
S3 has just released their Chrome S27 graphics chip, and cards are starting to become available. This brings them back into a competitive position with ATI and NVidia.
ATI and NVidia will not open-source their drivers for X.org, the open-source X server used on most Linux systems, nor will they publish documentation allowing third-party drivers to be written. NVidia seems outright hostile to open source, for reasons that are unclear. Both companies have claimed that they don’t want competitors to be able clone their chips, but neither an open source driver nor documentation would help that happen. Those graphics chips contain hundreds of millions of transistors, and knowing the register-level interface to the chip doesn’t make cloning easy. If it did, there would be many companies making Pentium 4 equivalent processors, because the x86 documentation is publicly available. But in actuality, only one company (AMD) has managed to make an x86 processor that can compete with Intel on performance, and they’ve taken many years and hundreds of millions of dollars to do it.
Via, S3′s parent company, has said that they will not release their X driver as open source, but according to a Linux Today article, the reason they give is that releasing source code would show their competitors the workarounds for flaws in their chips, which the competitors could use as marketing ammunition. They point out that all complex chips have flaws; Intel and AMD actually publish errata lists detailing the flaws in their processors, so it is not surprising that graphics chips should also have flaws.
However, IMNSHO it is silly to think that ATI or NVidia would do that, or that consumers would fall for it if they did. AMD and Intel don’t use each others’ errata lists for marketing deriding each others’ products. And if Intel said that you shouldn’t buy an AMD CPU because of some minor errata, wouldn’t you take that with a grain of salt, and question Intel about their own errata.
I think the real reason Via isn’t releasing the driver as open source is that keeping it closed is the path of least resistance. Until we (the open source community) convince them of the benefits to them of open source, it is easier for them to keep it closed, and make up silly reasons for doing so.
If they did release the drivers as open source, it would benefit them at least two major ways:
As X and Linux users and developers, we should try to convince S3/Via that there is a lot of upside to open source for them, and very little downside.
I don’t know of any direct contacts at S3 or Via that we should contact, but it may make sense to send a polite email to their Sales and PR/Marketing departments. The email addresses are on their contacts page.