'Commercial Partners'

[Andy Green]

Eric S. Raymond wrote:
> Andy Green <andy at warmcat.com>:
>> I don't see any evidence for this for 2D.  The problems all seem to be 
>> to do with 3D acceleration hardware in the past, present, and presumably 
>> in the future. 
> 
> If true, that would still a problem.  The one guy I know who's a serious
> graphics maven says that the wave of the future is 3D texture maps for
> everything, including individual font glyphs.

As Nicholas says, all is not completely rosy in the 2D garden.  But the 
proposal I replied to was that for future graphics card we will be 
unable to use resolutions greater than 'VESA', whatever that means since 
you can get 1600x1200 in Vesa, in fact I think the table comes out of 
the card's video BIOS and can support anything.  It seems for normal 2D 
the open source drivers are able to do a decent job but advanced stuff 
can be a different matter.

>>          And that in turn, like everything this thread touches, 
>> seems to come down in the end to patents.
> 
> My graphics guy says that's true, but not in the way you might
> expect.  He thinks the reason the graphics vendors are all doing locked 
> firmware is because they're all violating *each others'* patents
> and don't want to get found out...

That is what I was referring to.  Eric Blossom from Gnu Radio told me 
this as a possible explanation for wlan driver secrecy as well.

>> Macromedia’s Flash - 98%
>> Viewpoint Media Player - 64.3%.  (<-- possible dodginess)
>> Shockwave - 58.1%
>> Windows Media Player 9 - 57.5%
>> RealNetworks RealPlayer - 46.5%
>> Apple’s QuickTime - 43.1%
> 
> RealNetworks we've got.  Flash and shockwave we can get.  I dunno
> what "Viewpoint Media Player" is.  

It seems they may have funded the original survey :-)  Hence the disclaimer.

> That leaves WMP9 (hopeless) 
> and QuickTime (possible).  

Well let's not conflate the player app with the codecs.  Quicktime for 
example contains Sorensen and 30-odd other codecs:

http://www.simnet.is/klipklap/quicktime/

Each of these will have its own patent story and people looking to get 
their hands on RHAT's cash if RHAT give them the chance.  WMP is just a 
relatively lightweight pretty usermode app on top of a similar list of 
codecs that come with it and Windows.  You see mplayer go on unmolested 
because it will not repay the attack as they are mainly individuals in 
Eastern Europe AIUI.  RHAT though have a large amount of cash, if they 
step wrong an attack has a chance of a fat cash reward.  Further, if 
RHAT folks are not seen to protect their assets with due diligence, they 
face a shareholder suit.  Their care is very pragmatic indeed.

 > The goal of the game here isn't perfection, it's
 > maximizing adoption rate.

I don't believe I saw that in the Fedora manifesto.  Much as I loathe 
MSFT personally, for some users they are the right answer as things 
stand and Fedora is not.  But things are slowly shifting and RHAT is one 
of the engines inching things around.

> Not absolutely, but once you know the percentages and costs you can
> pick a minimax.  

Well then you need to amend your earlier clarion call to arms to 
'looking as least like a useless wanker as we can given the reality for 
some usage cases (MSFT or AAPL codecs, DVDs, HDTV media, Digital music 
downloads in WMA or FairPlay) we are inescapably actually useless 
wankers'.  OR you can just not get into that game if you see you can't 
win, and take the initiative by raising a different standard for people 
to rally around and providing an alternative way: "If it ain't Free, 
keep it".

-Andy

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