New ATI Driver

[manchicken]

On Friday 20 July 2007 06:18:28 Dotan Cohen wrote:
[snip]
> As right as you are, _any_ improvements in official Linux support from
> major manufacturers such as ATI/AMD is a step in the right direction.
> It will set precedent to the smaller manufacturers.

Except that it's not the smaller manufacturers that are a problem.  It is 
particularly the large manufacturers that are the problem.  They use their 
market share to marginalize and exclude those who are contrary to their goals 
or are simply less profitable.  THAT is what the problem is.  It's not that 
they can't, it's that they won't, and they never will until they're in a 
situation where they have no other choice.

Buying their cards and using their proprietary drivers does nothing but 
encourage this negative behavior.  I fully support proprietary drivers for 
those who didn't know when they got their machine that they were going to 
have this issue.  The people who do know better, however, should probably 
consider buying better so that they don't get this problem in the future and 
so that they don't encourage this behavior.

A step in the right direction would be releasing code or specs or promising 
not to sue those who reverse engineer things.  This isn't a step in the right 
direction, it is merely a continuance of prior bad behavior.

-- 
~ manchicken <><
(A)bort, (R)etry, (I)nfluence with large hammer.
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