Fedora Core 5 Idea -- let's drop this ...

[Sean]

On Tue, July 5, 2005 2:41 am, Bryan J. Smith said:
> On Tue, 2005-07-05 at 01:24 -0500, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
>> God damn can't people stop and not make it about "versus" and
>> "draw a line in the sand?"  Especially when they don't know
>> what they are drawing the line about?!
>
> I really mean this ... it seems like "double" or even "triple"
> standards are applied to some vendors, and the presumed "support"
> of so-called "open source."
>
> ATI (as of the R300+) has turned into an even more proprietary vendor
> than nVidia in many respects.  Matrox never really supported anything
> but their proprietary drivers, and even support of those has waned
> more recently.
>
> Now if people could actually "nail down" a set of "criteria" to say
> "oh, you're helping open source" then I'd actually be more "open"
> to this whole "debate."
>
> But to date, that has _not_ happened.  It's been general assumptions,
> general "oh, now we're talking brand X, instead of brand Y, so brand
> X has line A we hold them against, instead of the normal line B we
> hold brand Y against."
>
> And worst of all, because I'm the stupid schmuck that actually tried
> to explain some things in the last thread, I'm now labeled a "nVidia
> cheerleader."  Man, it's funny, but I'm actually quite the _opposite_.
> I only tried to take the time to explain different things in a
> previous thread, and _only_ after the thread had gone well on long
> enough to the point where people like yourself were stating half-
> truths and false assumptions.
>
> If someone has a support question, and it is about something that
> the Fedora Team cannot support, just leave it at Rahul's link -- and
> not some poor attempt at an advocacy campaign that doesn't even have
> a well-defined set of criteria.
>
> But if you really find you need to attempt to do so, then by all
> means, go ahead.  Try to make the ATI, Matrox, etc... square peg
> fit in the round open source hole -- because if I think you start
> holding _all_ vendors to the _same_ criteria, you're going to be
> quite disappointed.
>

There is no double standard in using and promoting open source drivers. 
There are already open source drivers today that can do the job for the
vast majority of cases.  Let's not let the nVidia brand loyalists obscure
the message that there are open source drivers available today that will
do the job well for many situations.  Let's not let this message be
diluted by people who care more about brand loyalty to nVidia than they do
about promoting open source solutions.   Maybe, just maybe, there will be
enough market pressure to encourage further open source choices.

Cheers,
Sean