[mythtv-users] No ATI support for Myth says AMD

[Joe Votour]

<snip>

> My $0.02,
> Matt

I've done embedded devices for seven years now, I've dealt with Conexant,
Broadcom, Wind River, Microsoft, and other companies in that time.  All
companies have their secrets (trade or not).  (Surprisingly, Wind River
was the most open of these companies, but only after having to get
forceful.)

The best that nVidia could ever do is supply a datasheet for the GPU, and
other components on the board that they have developed.  I'll put my money
where my mouth is and state with almost certainty - nVidia did not develop
everything that exists on their card.  They surely licensed IP
(Intellectual Property) from other companies.  On all of the embedded
devices I've done (mostly DOCSIS data/video), we started with the
reference design from the vendor maker (e.g. Broadcom) and just made
modifications to it.

The nVidia (binary blob) driver is surely made up of a bunch of code from
other third parties - I'm willing to bet their GL code was originally done
by somebody else, and tweaked by nVidia to reflect better performance on
their cards.  Said code may be clean, or it might violate patents or trade
secrets held by somebody else.

So, when they say that they'll lose their competitive advantage, it means
that they don't see any reward in opening themselves up to a boatload of
legal liability.  The (currently) dominant operating system comes out with
new releases every few years, and the API stays fairly constant, whereas
the Linux kernel (far from dominant) breaks things regularly.  If I was
running nVidia or AMD/ATI, I certainly know which operating system I'd
make my products for (80%+ of the market) - less driver
development/support effort on nVidia's part - helping keep costs down
(whether that trickles down to the customer is a discussion for another
time and place).

Understand that this is not a perfect world where you can do whatever you
want without consequences.  AMD and nVidia are publicly traded companies,
they have shareholders to answer to.  Because they see the most ROI on the
Windows platform, they will continue to support the Windows platform. 
They honestly couldn't care less about Linux, and I'm willing to bet that
they'd be happy if all of the Linux distributions died tomorrow.  In the
meantime, they'll do minimal support for Linux to appease enough people to
get a good reputation ("building the brand").  Letting people outside of
their company write drivers which they have no control over would be
corporate suicide.

-- Joe


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