ATI R300 Mesa, Gallium3D Compared To Catalyst

[elanthis]

If it didn't truly matter, why is *BSD not more popular than Linux? It had the head start, you know...

Linux has the GPL, and Linux is more popular, QED?

You know, the global temperature has steadily increased while the number of pirates in the world has steadily decreased. That correlation must be a proof of causation! Pirates keep the world cool! It's science!

[Svartalf]

Of course licenses matter, unfortunately. We don't need license wars, though. BSDL is fine for many projects (and might be bad for some), the same is valid for (L)GPL. But there's no One True License and no need to be fanatic about certain licenses.

Heh... Well, I did say one should pick and choose their battles. My preference is for the LGPL myself, but I've released (and WILL continue to release) under MIT/X11 and BSD as well. If he wants to do something and it's not taking away from me or anyone else's direct efforts...let him. If he succeeds in moving it forward under the LGPL or GPL, then that was what was meant to be.

Uhm, I was referring to sylware's plan to fork G3D or whatever. That would be pointless. Linux development is already much more fragmented than is healthy.

Uh... They've been saying that selfsame thing for the last decade or more now... (I should know, I've been doing stuff in or for Linux since the 0.9x kernel series... )

In the end, it's about dealing with one's personal coding itch as much as anything else. And while both of us feel that it's a waste of at least his time, if he's happy, then at least I am happy. If he succeeds with the fork, so much the better- it's about the best code and practices winning out, right? It's not about all being the borg and doing the same thing to the same goal.

[Svartalf]

Linux has the GPL, and Linux is more popular, QED?

You know, the global temperature has steadily increased while the number of pirates in the world has steadily decreased. That correlation must be a proof of causation! Pirates keep the world cool! It's science!

If I had a dollar for every time some individual in one of these tech forums did the causation != correlation line, I'd be very much better off than I am right now.

No, it doesn't correlate. However, there IS a hint there that you overlooked- hopefully just to make that moot point.

[krazy]

Linux has the GPL, and Linux is more popular, QED?

You know, the global temperature has steadily increased while the number of pirates in the world has steadily decreased. That correlation must be a proof of causation! Pirates keep the world cool! It's science!

stupid, unfunny and wrong to boot. fail.

[yotambien]

I thought it was funny. And that it has a point. I don't understand Starvalf's answer to it.

[V!NCENT]

stupid, unfunny and wrong to boot. fail.

Whatever...

[pingufunkybeat]

It's a fact that many people refuse to publish code under the BSD license, especially after companies like Microsoft hijacked code and closed it and put it into their expensive solutions.

Svartalf was pointing at that. That's the cause. The rate of development of Linux can be explained at least in part through this documented fact. I guarantee you that SGI would not have released XFS under the BSD license, and that Sun would not have released StarOffice or Java (!!!! lol) under the BSDL.

He doesn't need to suggest that people don't like the BSDL, as a programmer with many years of experience in the Linux/BSD world, he is perfectly aware that there are many people who use the (L)GPL for these reasons.

To be honest, the situation is probably quite different for GPU drivers, which are so specialised and tied to so many other things, that ripping the code (to create a closed driver) would be pretty useless anyway.

[mantielero]

I am a user of ATI X1300 (no longer supported by the linux propietary driver anymore). I don't stop updating the kernel because of the GPU. The propietary driver stopped compiling about a year ago. For me the performance difference of r300g versus fglrx is huge: r300g works, fglrx doesn't work.

Thanks for your work guys. I'd love to help, but not being a developper is a big stopper.

[V!NCENT]

I realy like to contribute code somewhere in/to the driver stack. I realy dislike doing so in non-gpl but then again this is not a solo show and thus arguing about the more liberal license is just... totaly stupid/futile/egocentric/etcetera.

[monraaf]

It's hard to tell whether relicensing the graphics stack to GPL would attract more developers. There's always talk from people saying that they want to contribute to the graphics drivers. But saying you want to and actually contributing are two different things.

On the other hand, the more liberal license of the graphics stack has not yielded in any significant contributions from the BSD camp. And they've been leeching on Linux code for quite some time now.

Personally I would be in favor of relicensing to LGPL. But that's something for the actual contributors to decide.