VIA Appoints An Open-Source Liaison

[phoronix]

Phoronix: VIA Appoints An Open-Source Liaison

VIA's commitment to the open-source community has been everything but stellar. VIA Technologies has taken advantage of the open-source community before, and many are saying VIA is doing another open-source bluff...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjYxNA

[izual]

What is his name now?
Is it Harald, Herard or Herald?

[Kano]

The VIA website is one of the worst examples how you can confuse a user. Also when you finally manage to find a download don't expect that the thing they call driver acutally works. It working state is even below fglrx.

[izual]

Oh, now there are 2 choices left! Harald or Herard? :D

[Michael]

Oh, now there are 2 choices left! Harald or Herard? :D

Now there's only one choice left.

Note to self: Don't type news stories after a big drunken OSCON Sun-MySQL bash :o

[yoshi314]

they've made a wise choice - to appoint an external opensource-related person to manage the whole thing. similar to what ati has done.

that'll improve communication. depending on the competence of this person, which i'm not familiar with.

[Ex-Cyber]

I think it all hinges on how much authority he has. That is, will he actually be able to manage any work, or just make recommendations to management?

[ethana2]

How long did it take ATi to completely overhaul their image? 6 months?

I hope to see good things come from this.

[Svartalf]

Phoronix: VIA Appoints An Open-Source Liaison

VIA's commitment to the open-source community has been everything but stellar. VIA Technologies has taken advantage of the open-source community before, and many are saying VIA is doing another open-source bluff...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=NjYxNA

That'd be my take on things...they're playing another bluff. How many times have they said they're opening up and did diddly (Even within the last 6 months even...)? Now, considering that they've picked whom they picked, it'll be depending on how much actual pull the guy has within VIA's management chain as to what actually happens this time.

[grege]

To VIA a simple message.

If you want to be truely successful in the Netbook and mini-ITX markets building good hardware is not enough. You must have Operating Systems that run well on that hardware and Applications that just don't run, but run well.

The answer is Linux and the solution is open drivers.

Vista is too big for the small form factor machines, XP is dead.

It also needs to be up to date, an Ubuntu or Fedora 9, not the ancient Debian used by Xandros on the EeePC.

Open up the drivers and ALSA and Pulse Audio and XORG will make mini-ITX media boxes that work well and netbooks that just work. No mucking about, no driver downloads, just install and go and update through the distro.

VIA makes a profit, Intel gets some competition, the consumer gets reliable, reasonably priced product.

Everyone wins.

[Ex-Cyber]

The answer is Linux and the solution is open drivers.

[...]

Open up the drivers

[...]

Everyone wins.I fail to see how users of the BSDs or OpenSolaris (or Plan 9, or AROS, or Haiku...) win under this scenario.

[stan]

It would be nice if Phoronix could cover the part of the graphics driver (AGP subsystem) that VIA has already open-sourced and submitted to the Linux kernel with the help of Greg KH:

http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/5/30/442

Congrats to VIA, they couldn't have hired a better guy than Harald, who is one of the foremost fighters for Linux and the Free/Open Source development model.

[grege]

I fail to see how users of the BSDs or OpenSolaris (or Plan 9, or AROS, or Haiku...) win under this scenario.

Open drivers are open to everyone.

The BSDs use ALSA and XORG too. Once the drivers are in the tree you could build a FreeBSD box using a mini-ITX VIA motherboard, and a neat little low power green server or media centre that would make.

I have an EeePC 900 running Debian, all drivers are open source and readily available. A VIA netbook with the new Isaiah Processor will be great, and open drivers mean that you (and the manufacturers) could use any Linux or BSD without hassle.

I have built a VIA mini-ITX box to run Ubuntu, it was doable but the X config took a lot of mucking around and getting the mpeg processor part of the graphics chip functional was a difficult thing.

I hope that a year from now I can install any FOSS operating system on a VIA based machine and it will just work.

:)

[Ex-Cyber]

Open drivers are open to everyone.Driver code usually makes for terrible documentation, and it's rarely very portable. in general you can't just drop a Linux driver into BSD and expect to make a couple edits and recompile (and if you even think about doing the same for Plan 9, the inhabitants of 9fans would probably arrange to have you flayed). Sometimes code is factored nicely enough that large chunks of it can be reused, but that can't be taken for granted.

The BSDs use ALSASince when?

[grege]

OK You got me BSD does not use ALSA, perhaps they should make ABSDSA. Last time I tried PC-BSD it could be made work with my VIA Envy24T sound card.

But, back to the point.....

If VIA release the information needed to write drivers then anyone can use it. And that was the point of my original post. They must release documentation in the same way AMD/ATI are doing. The current VIA Linux video drivers are rubbish and certainly would not be used as the basis of the new driver, it would be written from scratch or the current open driver extended.

If all they do is release to code to their Linux driver, they will shoot themselves in the foot.

Intel are attacking VIA's hold on the mini-ITX world with the Atom processor. Open sourcing is a very effective way of fighting back.



Driver code usually makes for terrible documentation, and it's rarely very portable. in general you can't just drop a Linux driver into BSD and expect to make a couple edits and recompile (and if you even think about doing the same for Plan 9, the inhabitants of 9fans would probably arrange to have you flayed). Sometimes code is factored nicely enough that large chunks of it can be reused, but that can't be taken for granted.

Since when?

[Ex-Cyber]

If all they do is release to code to their Linux driver, they will shoot themselves in the foot.It looks like we're in agreement then; I (mis)read your earlier posts as advocating just open-sourcing the driver code as though it would solve everyone's problems...

[Alejandro Nova]

S3 open source drivers! We want them! ;)

[some-guy]

I fail to see how users of the BSDs or OpenSolaris (or Plan 9, or AROS, or Haiku...) win under this scenario.
It becomes possible for them to get OSS driver's too

What's necessary:
Port DRM
Port DDX to new DRM
Port DRI to new DRM

[Ex-Cyber]

It becomes possible for them to get OSS driver's too

What's necessary:
Port DRM
Port DDX to new DRM
Port DRI to new DRMOperating systems don't all implement the same device models and APIs (how do you port DRM to a system without ioctl?), and VIA makes a heck of a lot more than graphics cores.

[some-guy]

Operating systems don't all implement the same device models and APIs (how do you port DRM to a system without ioctl?), and VIA makes a heck of a lot more than graphics cores.
I didn't say it becomes easy, just more possible

[Vadi]

Congratulations to them on their move. Shows that while the company has difficulties grasping open-source, they do have business wit (and that is - hire an expert who knows how to do it).

I hope it pays off for them, and the customers.

[RealNC]

There's a big market waiting for Via in Linux. Many Linux users are not interested in "leet" performance monsters to run games, but rather prefer non-expensive, power-saving and silent hardware. Those things are the main focus of VIA, no?

It makes sense for them to fully support Linux.

[Vadi]

I'd say more people on windows are interested in the non-expensive cards than on linux really ;)

[RobbieAB]

Not really, less people on windows can manage with minimal CPU power and 2D graphics these days.

Vista needs so much more hardware...

[RealNC]

I'd say more people on windows are interested in the non-expensive cards than on linux really ;)
More people on Windows are interested in everything than on Linux ;)

A Linux box where you can safely browse the web, use email, write letters, watch videos, listen to your music and such is a good market. Most people I know who use Linux use it that way. Only few are after 3D and CPU hungry things (x264 for example.)