[NTLUG:Discuss] CPU History

[Greg Edwards]

David wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 16, 2003 at 09:13:05AM -0600, Greg Edwards wrote:
> 


> 
> To accept the NVidia cards is to live as a bird in a cage furnished by
> NVidia.  It's a very nice cage, with some pretty graphics, but it's
> still a cage.  I refuse to surrender the ability to fly for myself.
> 

I take it that you don't work for a company that builds a product that 
is sold for a profit.

I've done projects for hardware builders and I can tell you that the 
cost to NVidia associated to releasing binary drivers is not chicken 
feed.  However, the cost in competitive advantage to NVidia would be 
tremendous if they were to release their trade secrets.  Anyone can 
figure out how the cards are built just by looking at them and seeing 
the parts that are used.  What their competitors cannot get is what's 
inside the proms (firmware) and how the parts work together as a result 
of what the firmware does with the commands given to it.

Not buying their product due to their not releasing technical specs is 
your choice, that's what a market driven economy is all about.  However, 
is your position a good business decision?  Is your company better off 
with choosing a vendor that may be supplying a lesser solution?  As a 
consultant, that a client is depending on to make a recommendation as to 
the best overall solution, I wouldn't make the same choice based on open 
source alone.  If their Linux drivers didn't work and caused systems to 
crash constantly, that would be a different situation.

You do have the choice to invest a couple hundred million dollars to 
start a video card manufacturing company.  Spend a couple years 
designing your own card.  Spend tons of time and effort getting retail 
stores to put your product on the shelf.  And then you can release all 
the technical specs right along with the user's guide in the box.

I love the open source movement and will defend it to the hilt.  Many 
aspects to a computer are simply too important and basic to leave to 
companies like MS.  Drivers to run drives, video, sound, I/O ports, 
communication cards, etc. are essential to the basic operation of the 
system and are not optional.  However, 3D video cards, surround sound, 
DVD, accounting packages, virtual machines, and such are optional 
add-ons.  If we shun the companies that want to make a profit doing 
these add-on products we will not get the best solutions that can be had.

JMO,
-- 
Greg Edwards
New Age Software, Inc.
http://www.nas-inet.com