[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


More information about the mythtv-users mailing list