Graphics Driver Frameworks and Security

Dave Airlie airlied at gmail.com
Tue May 16 21:35:31 PDT 2006


> >
> > The real problem is that X.org doesn't break the ABI often enough.  If
> > you make sure the ABI breaks in every release they'll stop complaining
> > real soon.
>
> They'll stop complaining because they've gone back to Windows or MacOS, where
> people aren't actively trying to break the drivers they use.   Breaking ABI
> won't convince the vendors to open source their drivers, it'll just convince
> them it's more expensive and less profitable for them to support Xorg, and
> make them more likely to give up.
>

If only it was true, look ATI/NVidia support things like SLI and
Crossfire (how many users do you think things like that have??),
Xorg/Linux has way more users than things like that, breaking ABI is
one method to push their costs up and make them think about whether
open-sourcing can reduce those costs, the people who make those sort
of decisions are not the engineers or even engineering managers, it
would usually be someone with some sort of silly VP type title..

Dave.



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