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Microsoft sells software. Evey user of OpenOffice is one less user of
MS Office. Nvidia sells hardware, and gives the software drivers away
for free as far as I know. Linux users of open source drivers cost
Nvidia nothing, and may represent a hardware sale they would not
otherwise have gotten. Thus, there is significant motivation for
Microsoft to sabotage OpenOffice, and none that I can see for Nvidia
to do the same to open source drivers.<br>
<br>
Bruce Byfield wrote:
<blockquote cite="mid:1189122307.5334.2.camel@nanday.nenday.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">On Thu, 2007-06-09 at 16:55 -0600, Frank Cox wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">While good, it's still not as good as having proper open-source drivers
supported by the manufacturer as well as the community.
The Noveau driver project faces the same unfortunate situation with Nvidia as
the OpenOffice folks do when reverse-engineering the MS doc format: there is
nothing stopping Nvidia from making a few "improvements" that will break the
Noveau drivers more-or-less at will.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Counterpoint: The community is more strongly motivated to keep the
drivers current than the manufacturer. And, given the FOSS community's
strong record with reverse-engineering, I doubt that Nvidia will keep
ahead of Nouveau for any length of time once the basic drivers are done.
</pre>
</blockquote>
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