Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2004 10:18:12 +0200
From: Tonnerre <tonnerre@thundrix.ch>
To: Timothy Miller <miller@techsource.com>
Cc: Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: HARDWARE: Open-Source-Friendly Graphics Cards -- Viable?
Message-ID: <20041024081812.GA11655@thundrix.ch>
References: <4176E08B.2050706@techsource.com>
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Salut,

My CHF 0.05 (we don't have smaller pieces):

Open hardware is just as necessary in this world as open software. The
Freedom CPU people know that, and they're a bunch of people developing
open hardware, having  no money for the step  of actually producing. I
agree that their  design is debatable. But the idea  is clear: we need
open hardware to write truly open software on.

I know several companies who would like to produce open hardware, too,
but have  the same fears that  your company has. Someone  will have to
step  up   and  produce  open   hardware,  and  if  someone   does  it
successfully, I guess a whole  aeroplane of companies is going to take
off producing open hardware as well.

The  thing companies  tend  to  disregard is  the  fact that  whenever
something is open, there will be people developing on it in their free
time. It's  that with Open Source  software, and it  will certainly be
the same with open hardware.

For a graphics  card, OpenGL support is almost  vital. This means that
you'll have to implement it in  order to be successful. Because 90% of
the  people out  there, if  not more,  are using  their  computers for
playing games.

That said, I  think there are lots of people  willing to contribute to
your hardware  design. I'll be  glad to do  that, once I got  the time
to. The Freedom CPU people might  as well. I guess that people will do
a lot more than just the firmware for you. I mean, AMD developed their
Opteron based on suggestions from (open source) developers, people who
need  to  handle  that  hardware,   and  it  turned  out  to  be  damn
good. People  should just  listen to those  who got probably  the best
idea of what hardware should be like: those who code on it.

If you  can show  good 3D performance,  you might  as well get  a good
chance to get lots of Windows  Quake players to use your hardware. And
if you were to support  OpenGL 2.0, people will suddenly start kissing
your feet.

Maybe we  can start off an  open hardware development  group with your
company selling the end products...

On Wed, Oct 20, 2004 at 06:02:51PM -0400, Timothy Miller wrote:
> - x86 BIOS/OpenBoot/OpenFirmware code under BSD and GPL license

BSD without advertisement clause should be enough, I guess?

> (1) Would  the sales volumes  of this product  be enough to  make it
> worth producing (ie. profitable)?

This depends on how public the  product gets. Lots of people here will
be able to help you a lot  with that step. If IBM and/or Intel were to
say,  "$COMPANY supports  Open Hardware  because it's  good",  I guess
people will actually start buying open hardware.

> (2) How much would you be willing to pay for it?

People already pay several hundreds of CHF for a graphics card.

> (3) How do you feel about the choice of neglecting 3D performance as
> a priority?  How  important is 3D performance?  In  what cases is it
> not?

Since 3D  and software suspend are  about the only problem  we have, I
guess the card wouldn't have a  chance if it wasn't to have remarkable
3D performance.

> (5) What's most important to you, performance, price, or stability?

To  us  it's  stability,  however,  to  the rest  of  the  world  it's
performance. I'm not sure whether geeks are a big enough market.

			    Tonnerre

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