[mythtv-users] Current wisdom on PVR-150/250/350/500
Michael T. Dean
mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Mon Apr 17 04:34:03 UTC 2006
On 04/17/2006 12:11 AM, Joe Votour wrote:
> Believe me, their competition could learn a great deal
> from just their drivers, since drivers are an
> interface to the hardware. As an example, the
> competition might see in the driver some great way to
> shrink down a transfer of data implemented in the
> driver (which exposes how the hardware works), and
> decide to then add that logic to their next graphics
> chip.
I really think this argument is like the argument that software
copy-protection schemes prevent piracy. Generally, they only stop the
people that aren't the problem (end users) instead of stopping those
with the time/interest/equipment/money (large-scale pirates, or the
competition).
In other words, good luck trying to convince me that ATI isn't paying a
team of developers to reverse engineer NVIDIA's drivers /and/ hardware
(and vice versa). After all, look how closely capabilities and even
designs have been tracking over the years. I don't think that's
completely the "free market" effect ensuring the people get what they want.
And, as a matter of fact, binary-only drivers aren't even stopping end
users from (at least partially) reverse engineering the
drivers--reference the Windows Omega Drivers (
http://www.omegadrivers.net/ ) and other similar projects.
Mike
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